


sublimation

by actinide



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Anxiety, Armchair Therapy, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Incest, M/M, Multi, Not Canon Compliant, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Canon, Self-Hatred, Tender Sex, The Homestuck Epilogues, intimacy issues, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-06-25 03:42:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19737610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actinide/pseuds/actinide
Summary: Dirk Strider returns to Earth-C, and struggles with the mortifying idea of being known.To let go of your past, to let yourself be loved, these are good goals.He just doesn't know if he's ready.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome this is the sequel (squeakuel) to my other fic, [phase change](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19059040)  
> If you haven't read it, you're gonna be confused, but far be it from me to stop you  
> It also is not at all like p/c, in that I didn't have the patience to write it in 3rd person and also it's not all fucked up.  
> Forgive the inconsistency (narratively) of 2nd person, it was just more comfortable!  
> This is just a candy ass Good Ending bc it's what I wanted to write, and this is a Prime example of "i wrote this for me but y'all can read it if you want"  
> TW for suicidal tendencies thoughts and ideation, self-loating anxiety, xenophobia, characters talking 'bout death and shit, and of course, boys kissing  
> background davekat and rosemary but neither are the focus!

There are days when the unkindness still lives in your skin. Where the parts of you that are bent and broken into crude, fractured pieces, like glass, like shards of an old vinyl record, warped with age, or yellowed with time, shine through, glow through the cracks like a beacon. Whether it belongs to you or not, you’re not entirely sure, nor do you particularly care to analyze it.

Or you wouldn’t, if it were anyone else’s story, or you were, indeed, anyone else.

But you’re not and you’re you and you lie in bed most mornings, head pillowed on your arm, or Dave’s chest (if he’ll allow you, or you’ll allow yourself, and you don’t, most mornings, still can’t bring yourself to) wondering at the part of yourself that still thinks something is missing.

And how unfair that does feel, now that you’re back here, on an Earth that will never amount to anything but a doomed version of your own death, in a timeline that was relevant, is relevant, will never be relevant again, and you feel.

Trapped.

You have learned to let go of so much, in your journey to do right, in your acknowledgment of doing wrong, but there is still something stuck deep within you that cannot let go of your own failure. And why should you? With everything you have done, with how you have twisted everyone around until they no longer know themselves, no longer know which way is up, and that terror, that fear of the person you could become, the person you were, you were, oh god you _were_ , weren’t you -

It writhes beneath your skin like a living thing, leaves you sick and shuddering and unable to sleep, to eat, to rest, even for a moment.

You let go of the narrative pull, but it still lives there in the back of your mind, a siren song, a taste on your tongue like fermented oranges, like bile, the sensation of green felt beneath your fingertips and the chill of a freshly cleaned jacket, lined in silk.

You think you’re making great strives towards normality.

Or you want to.

You want to, you do, but things are, they’re.

Well it’s weird.

It’s abnormal, you’re abnormal, and that too lingers around you like a haze. People avoid you, your friends won’t look at you (good, fucking good, you don’t want them to you can’t bear it, you don’t deserve it, you’re not ready, you’ll never be ready) and you stand apart from society like you haven’t done since your childhood.

It is less unsettling, you think, than perhaps it should be.

You slip from the bed quietly with only a whisper of noise, but it is not without protest from Dave, who makes a soft, displeased sound, hand snaking free of the covers and grabbing your wrist before your feet even touch the floor.

The something inside you that you cannot name freezes, or maybe it’s you, it’s just you, and you freeze, look back over your shoulder to see the calm of his face, eyes still closed, brows bunched in the middle. You long to reach out, to smooth that worry line flat, to take from him the concern you cause, all you, always you, the stress you pull from him like loose threads on old furniture.

It isn’t his fault you’re like this.

“I’ll be right back,” you murmur, gentle as can be, so careful not to tug, not to reject. There is fragility in all parts of the space that separates you, and it is something you are both learning to navigate. “Just gonna grab a drink, kiddo, I won’t be more’n a minute.” It spits free from your mouth like a reflex and you curl into yourself, despite knowing it will wake him further. You’ve gotten rid of so much, peeled away layers of yourself like (like an onion, you’d said to Rose, for that moment when both of you just were) skin peeling back from bone, exposed little wires that run through your veins, pieces of you, or not you, but still you, dug so tight into the muscle you’ll never get them free.

“S’okay” he says, and his voice is graveled, low and slurred with sleep. You raise your eyes to see one of his, just barely cracked open, vibrant red between pale lashes. “S’fine, man. We’re working on it. I’ll like, call you sport or somethin’ next time, get good ‘n even with you.” He squeezes your wrist before letting you go and rolling over, stretching out his limbs, long and lean, filling the space you left behind as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. You wonder at that for a moment, run your thumb absently along the edge of your opposite wrist, until you can feel the twitch of your palmaris tendon, the beat of your pulse, half a second quicker than it should be.

There is such warmth that floods you, when you watch him sleep, when you know he can sleep, when you know he’s safe and he’s okay, and you don’t need to worry about Dave, you know that, but you do, even if you don’t have to, because he sleeps so soundly in the bed you share, too small, too new, and you waver a moment, consider returning to bed before leaving instead.

You will never achieve that again, you think as you trot down the stairs of their (your, it can be yours too, if you let it, they moved all the way out into the middle of fuck off nowhere for you, the least you could do is be grateful, but you can’t, you just can’t, you can’t bear it, can’t stand it) hive. You will never have that kind of peace, the ability to relax, to be still, to think “It’ll all work out,” to let things be.

It simply isn’t in your nature, never has been, and all you have left to do is agonize, to slog through the rest of this life, however long it may be, and know that nothing you do will ever truly matter, not ever again.

Perhaps there is a kindness to that, but if there is, if it exists, you’re not sure you can really accept it, at least not yet.

You let out a shuddering sigh, wipe a hand down your face.

Calm.

Be calm. Be present. Acknowledge your irrationality and take a step back. Truly look at the situation and stop doing this nihilistic bullshit before the neighbors hear you all the way from down the fucking street.

You attempt, fail, and after a long second standing there, up to your ears in your own bullshit, you head towards the kitchen, despite the fact that you’re not thirsty at all and it’s just barely creeping up on four AM.

Four AM isn’t too late to get shit done, you muse (reason, you’re trying to reason your lack of sleep, as if the days aboard the ship weren’t bad enough, but it’s not like you have anywhere to be in the morning, and you’re unbearable, aren’t you, look how ridiculous you’re being right now). It’s not like you have access to your workshop right now, but having nothing to do is just. Absolutely killing you. You were never meant to sit still, and when you did, you were never particularly good at it. If you left now, if you made it back by morning, they might not even notice you were gone.

Or Dave might, you think, sneaking a glass from the cupboard. He’d wake up and you’d be gone and you’d get an angry text, then two, then twenty, and he’d have to hunt you down and quite frankly, you’re not sure the two of you can handle another round of intergalactic footsie.

It’s almost summer now, on your Not-Quite-Earth, on your planet twisted sideways, and soon it’ll be hot, sweat sticking your shirt to your back, your lives on the thin line of peace between the troll and human kingdoms, plagued by the heavy, humid air associated with a place that could almost be Texas, if you closed your eyes and stood on your head. Better to sleep through it, really, rather than weather the heat. Save your waking hours for dusk, sleep when the day breaks.

Trolls have the right idea in some respects, you suppose. Were you not currently in something bordering on what you imagine to be a quarantine of sorts, you might not protest moving in closer to the city, maybe a place nearer to Rose and Kanaya (though they are not far, are they, and all of you can fly, if you need to). You like the countryside alright, though, and you’ve never been much of a people person.

It’s probably better this way.

“Just the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

There is nothing particularly quiet about Karkat’s voice, neither in tone or pitch, but it never wakes Dave, so you never complain. This isn’t your first time dealing with the two of them, far from it, the domesticity of their disgusting bachelor pad (not that you’re much better, slobs the three of you), and it doesn’t really bother you half as much now as it did when you first got back, jittery and sick, biting your nails til they bled.

You turn silently, the pivot and swivel of your feet in a single fluid motion, about face, as light and airy as you dare. Nonthreatening. You’re always aiming for nonthreatening, these days.

It’s a thin line to walk, for someone like you.

Karkat stands at the edge of the stairs in a set of pajamas you know immediately belonged to Dave, faded red shirt and tattered bottoms inches too long. It’d be sweet, if you were that kind of person, but you’re not, so it isn’t, and you watch Karkat grip the towel around his shoulders just a little bit tighter.

“Hey,” you say, try for casual. You don’t bother smiling. “Couldn’t sleep either, huh?”

Karkat does not move immediately, a muscle in his jaw working at half-speed. It’s been three months since you got back, since they dragged you back, bound and chained (metaphorically, of course, not that you’d put it past Rose, with her at the head of the narrative), and you think that sometimes, he probably wishes you were not here at all.

Can you blame him?

(You could, you could, but you won’t, wouldn’t dare.)

He hadn’t so much as looked at you for more than a moment on the ship, though in fairness he didn’t have much time to air out any grievances; if Dave wasn’t still spitting screws like metal teeth during your departure, you probably wouldn’t have made it home at all. At least not in less than quite literal years. What a disaster that could have been. Christ. Nevermind that Kanaya still wanted to actively kill you for weeks following, you’re lucky he didn’t give you a dressing down for the ages. You’d have deserved it, you think. Probably still do. You’re a little disappointed, really.

But maybe he’s evolving, or growing up at least, learning not to spit out every first thought he has, unfiltered, raw, sometimes cruel. That’d be for the better, you muse, somewhat intrigued by the idea. Stop, reign that in. It doesn’t matter. You don’t deserve their time, you’re lucky to receive anyone’s at all.

He still isn't’ talking to Jane, neither him nor Dave, not that you can blame either of them, because Jane can’t stand to be in the same room as you without bursting into tears of fury and,

And something else you don’t care to dwell on, because that would be admitting to a hurt you’re not sure you deserve, not yet.

You pushed her. You know that. You should have taken her hand sooner, you should have pulled her back. You were the one in control. You were the one with the power. When the cherub pushed her harder, you should have known, you should have _known_.

You wonder, vaguely, where they are now, that other narrator, a corpse reanimated, a muse in their own right, if not a particularly good one.

She’s resigned now, anyway, Jane. First order of business, with Rose and her metal frame at the helm (and that had brought you to your knees, feeling your work undone, a physicality to it you never predicted, nausea and acid that burned through you in waves), and when it was all over, when the idea of Earth’s first president was erased from history, when the interference of gods in politics was banished from thought, Jane had looked at you, speechless, broken, and you sat there, faced with failure, and you took it with a grace you had not earned.

She slapped you, you remember, speechless, shaking, eyes red from unshed tears, and when she walked away, security detail trailing after her, you didn’t dare complain. Didn’t dare give chase, didn’t dare beg forgiveness.

And how could you, how could you, ( _closestthingtoamothergrandmothernannasprite_ ) one of your only friends, one of the only people in the world you used to know, who helped you cling to sanity unknowingly but without question, without complaint, with nothing to offer but kindness for years upon years.

Speaking to Jake is also, currently, out of the question. You rocked that boat before. This time you punched a goddamn hole in the engine room and that fucker is SINKING.

He’s also Rose _and_ Jack in this scenario, because a part of you refuses to deny how self-absorbed he can be, and because you’re the iceberg anyway, aren’t you.

Obviously.

So you watch Karkat waver at the stairs before his mouth sets into a familiar scowl (and it’s almost comforting, to know that you don’t get any special treatment in that regard, just a regular nuisance to a regular dude) as he crosses the room, leaves the towel draped across the back of the couch as he goes. You make room for him, press your hip against the counter and keep clear. “There’s not much point in me pretending to be diurnal when you have worse sleeping habits than a troll.” He pauses with the fridge door half open, and you see the way red is bleeding into those eyes, how the pavement grey is almost fully receded now, collapsing inward like a dying star. “If you’re alright with the comparison.”

You’re being dramatic.

You might be tired.

It’s only been two nights, this time, and you took a nap tonight, got a full two hours squeezed in there, practically a record at this point, you think Jane would be impressed, if she still cared.

Okay, so you’re definitely tired.

“Honestly dude, I don’t really give a shit,” you tell him, and you don’t bother to shrug, because this isn’t really the time for it. “Still ain’t really used to sleeping, period, if you care to know the truth. Guess I’m out of practice with the whole. Being a normal human thing.”

Karkat looks you up and down in a way that is ten shades more judgmental than he should be allowed, considering his own bad habits, and snorts, closes the door after fetching free one of those neon green drinks Jade keeps leaving here. You still don’t know what’s in them - you can hardly ask, because the second anyone shows up, your main (read: only) goal is to GTFO until they’re gone.

It’s a system.

It works.

You’re ready to move on.

“Far be it from me to judge anyone here, Strider, but I think it’s about time for the water boiling device to look in the mirror and see its own reflection.”

“Pot calling kettle reference,” you note, attempting something you hope reads as friendliness. “Nice.”

Karkat shrugs as he sinks down on the couch, keeps an eye on you as he pops the cap with a twist of the wrist. It goes flying somewhere, makes a little TICK as it hits a wall somewhere, and then it is silent.

You could cut the tension in the air with a knife.

Or a sword.

Which, coincidentally, Dave will not let you have, despite how much more comfortable you’d be, despite how paranoid you feel now, defenseless, and that’s what they want, isn’t it, that’s what you’re striving for, isn’t it, fuck. You don’t need a strife specibus, at this level of godtier, but there is still an empty space in your inventory that sends your hand flexing,

fingers itching, most days, every day, that you can feel like a physical hole in the head.

Which some days (most days), you definitely wish you had.

Would be easier, anyway.

“You pick up a lot of shit after living with someone for years.” Oh he’s talking now. “I guess. Don’t know if you’ve met Dave, but he’s physically incapable of shutting up. I can’t really complain that much, since it makes listening to all of you more bearable.”

That’s a bit of sopor that Karkat missed, and you can see it stuck to the piece of his hair just behind his ear. You should tell him. He wouldn’t construe it as rude, you don’t imagine. Karkat was one of the first people to - well. Forgiveness might be a step too far. Tolerate your presence, perhaps. His devotion to and belief in Dave, you theorize, is why you are even alive at all, and you should be so lucky, you think selfishly, that Karkat prefers to sleep in his recuperacoon alone.

You reckon they do everything else together. Sleep just isn’t one of those things. Probably for the best. Dave is a monster bed hog. It’s not usually a problem, unless you need to take a leak but. You guess that’s just another problem you haven’t bothered to address. Isn’t worth it, and it makes him happy, besides.

“I would say the same,” you finally reply, take a moment to turn on the tap and fill the cup. You’re nothing if not a man of your word (or you were or you never were or you were but you won’t be again). “But the linguistic traits of low blood trolls aren’t that hard to parse, for the most part, and really it comes across as a longer, more roundabout way of saying things, rather than cutting to the point. If you prefer yourself verbose, I imagine it’d be easy to incorporate into your everyday tongue.” You pause, wince. You definitely shouldn’t have said any of that. “No offense meant, which I realize is rather pointless of me to say, considering.”

“None taken, but only because you have made it abundantly clear exactly how much of an ass you are about pretty much everything,” Karkat says dryly. You should really tell him about the sopor. You’re a bit surprised he’d get up and shower at all, actually, considering he’s spent the week working with Kanaya down in Earth-C’s first brooding caverns, and you imagine the work is probably tiring. Kanaya’s a daywalker, on top of it, and unlike Karkat, she doesn’t mind sleeping through the night.

Is that bottle glowing green?

You are so absolutely certain that bottle is glowing green.

You could be hallucinating, you suppose, but you’re still not entirely sure you’d be wrong.

“Speaking of,” Karkat says, snaps you back. He takes a sip, mouth turning in a way that isn’t entirely pleasant. “Couldn’t help but notice you’re being a recalcitrant sack of human shame globes in regards to Dave, and quite frankly, it’s getting on my nerves.”

You stutter to a stop, feel your muscles freeze, so tight and still you can hear the silence of the air around you, an indescribable hum, the absence of sound. Warm. Wait, that might be your ears. Not that you would blush, because you are twenty-six and not an idiot child. “Excuse me?” you manage.

“It’s really pathetic, actually,” he admits, expression still sour. “I know you Striders can’t really help it, what with being born with your heads shoved so far up your asses you would need a medical practitioner to get it free, but watching you limp around after Dave like a redsick barkbeast afraid of an ugly bone is seriously going to make me explode. You hear that, Dirk? I will shit myself so hard I leave this fucking dimension behind.”

That spins in your head like the track of a record stuck on repeat, and you make a sound in the back of your throat entirely on accident. If you weren’t so baffled, you might be embarrassed. “Did you just call Dave ugly.”

He rolls his eyes. “Of course that’s what you take away from this.” He takes another swig, sets it hard on the table. “Look, if this is about -”

“It’s not,” you say immediately, like a creep. It’s not as if you truly knew what he was going to say, but the path was fairly obvious. Karkat gives you a look and you try to put it into words without sounding like a complete dick muncher. Which is hard, because you pretty much live with your foot in your mouth. “I can hardly commit to the idea that we’re doing a good job, cohabiting like this, but I wouldn’t exactly concerned with - I do believe that humans are capable of polyamorous negotiations, despite your and Dave’s initial ineptitude regarding the subject.” You don’t say, “Regarding Jade.” It would be an unfair cruelty, given your history and current position, clutching a glass of water in the new hive of two people who deserve to have let you go.

Karkat stares, or scowls, though almost every expression looks severe on him. There’s no such thing as a limeblood troll, on this Earth, or as far as you know, any other, but you know (or you don’t, you never did, not this you, never this you) that he matches their characteristics to a tee, and that fascinates you. It is clear he has no time for your shenanigans, regardless. Karkat is extremely good at pretending not to like just about everyone, but there is no need for him to pretend with you. You respect that. “Are you an idiot?” he says finally.

You.

Aren’t expecting that.

You have always regarded him (and Dave, to an extent, look how that worked out for you) as predictable, but it throws you off, just for a moment. You take a sip of your water, roll an answer or three over in your head. You don’t speak in reactives, or at least try not to anymore. “I would say I could be, if the circumstances were right,” you settle on.

Karkat rolls his eyes, unbothered by your defensive, somewhat cagey behavior. It’s hardly a surprise, you think, that you react this way. You’re getting predictable (maybe that’s okay, maybe you can let that be okay). You suppose there are worse things to be. “I’m not a fucking wriggler, moron, my entire society is built on the idea of love in multiples. Did you ever stop to think it’s not that we didn’t like Jade, though I don’t, really, anymore, at least I’ve been considering it and I -” He stops, inhales, rubs his temple. “Look, that’s not the point. The fucking point is, don’t you think that maybe one of us is capable of seeing that the other liked someone else? After all these years spent doing - whatever the hell it is we’ve been doing. Weren’t you supposed to be all-seeing or some jackoff hoofbeast shit?”

Your whole brain, your argument, your prepared lecture, the whole thing goes out the window, and you stand there, clutching your water as the wheels turn fruitlessly in the air.

 _“Karkat is gonna be absolutely unbearable after this,”_ Dave had said, and it turns around in your head like a hamster on a wheel, over and over.

How.

How entirely unreasonable.

To think that he

Without your knowledge, somehow outside your realm of understanding, he.

But you could see that he liked Karkat, could see the softness of the smiles they exchanged, the way they sat beside each other on the couch, the way they swapped clothes.

He was.

Dave was.

Well.

Fuck.

“Fuck me,” you murmur, trip on something like admiration. He’s not an elegant dude by any means, but he knows shit. Or at least more than others, at least when it comes to Dave.

“No thanks,” Karkat says immediately, and he’s dragging his husktop out from under the cushions. “I’m not really interested in you that way, or at all, and I think that’s Dave’s job, besides.”

You choke, a sound in your mouth almost entirely incoherent, and don’t say anything else.

It ain’t like you need to impress him at all, because you don’t, know he truly doesn’t mean as much by it as your brain might like to think. It appears you’ve underestimated Karkat. You regret that.

You remember the way Dave’s mouth hesitated just a beat before pressing to yours, his hand splayed over your chest, desperate, yet sturdy. Certain.

Real fuckin’ anime moment, that whole thing.

Jesus.

You caved easier than a house of cards and most of paradox space probably knows it. You’re still not entirely sure why. Perhaps part of you was so afraid of the rejection, of the failure, that you took the first out you could.

It wouldn’t exactly be out of character for you.

You look at Karkat, at how he never really turns his back to you, how he glances at you surreptitiously when he thinks you’re not looking, like he’s waiting for you to fuck up, to cause harm enough to justify - something. You hardly think he’d kill you.

Nervous, maybe Uncertain.

What you say is, “Noted.”

He hums, typing idly.

And because you’re you, you fuck up. Just for kicks, you guess. Foot, meet mouth. “I don’t think I deserve the forgiveness I feel like we’re handing out here, by the way. Yours , or anyone else’s.” You pick at the edge of your glass, dig your nails into the chip on the corner. Clink, clink. “I’m not entirely sure why Dave is so willing to accept this, as you say, ‘hoofbeast shit’, but blindly accepting fate has never been entirely within my nature.”

“See, that’s the thing,” Karkat says, and his voice does go lower, though it’s not exactly gentle. “I don’t. Kanaya is my. Well I wanted her to be my... back when we. You know.” He sighs, lets his head flop back to stare at the ceiling. “Maybe I still do. She won’t ever forgive the shit you did, I think, and maybe she shouldn’t."

She definitely shouldn’t, you think, more amused than you have the right to be. You may regret some of your actions, but there is still a certainty to them that you cannot deny. You are not convinced you were entirely in the wrong, and that’s probably part of the problem.

You keep your mouth shut, because just this once, perhaps things are better if they are not about you.

“But I’m not her. Gamzee - he was - he killed my friends once. Not all of them, they did a pretty good job of fucking themselves up without his help, but...” He takes a shaky breath, itches his nose and shifts. There is a softness to Karkat at night, something he can only get across when he’s quiet, compassion, kindness. You admire that.

What you don’t do is bring up the reality where Gamzee killed him and Terezi both. It’s not the point, and all it would do is cause more harm. It’s a piece of yourself you still need to unwind from the rest of your soul.

“But I still forgave him, for awhile. Even though he probably didn’t deserve it.” He furrows his brow, bites his lip. You’re an expert now, when it comes to (literal) matters of the Heart, and you know heartbreak when you see it. “He was supposed to be special. When someone is your - it was supposed to matter. but he never apologized.” And he looks at you, frowns soft, a little unsteady. “He never said he was sorry, not for any of it. And that makes a difference, whether you want it to or not.”

You take a second, breathe, lick your lips. “I don’t believe I’ve ever apologized to you, either, Karkat.” And it’s thoughtful, your head tilted, your fingers tight on your glass.

“That’s exactly my point, you intentionally obtuse, triangle-shaded douchefuck!” he snaps, throws his hands up. “Listen to me, actually listen, for once in your pathetic self-absorbed life -” These insults are getting more pointedly related to Dave, you note, and you wonder if he picked it up from past complaints over the years or if it’s an opinion on you they share. Neither option is particularly flattering, but you do find it amusing. “For whatever godfucked reason, we are part of a group of some of the most sentimental, disgustingly family-oriented people I have ever had the displeasure of meeting. There’s plenty of people, all waiting in a fucking line, who would grant you forgiveness in the beat of a blood-pulser, if you just took the time to ask them for it.”

You do pause at that, feel the emptiness of the room like you’re looking for an escape, as if there’s anywhere to go, can just hear the silence that stretches between you, ringing in your ears, how even after you drain your glass, your mouth stays dry. “You can call it a heartbeat, you know,” you say, instead of something normal.

Fuck.

You’re a grown-ass man and you’re still doing this, huh.

“Oh fuck yourself and the hoofbeast you rode in on, Strider.”

“It was a spaceship, actually,” you say, and this time you’re almost smiling, “and it was shaped like a shark.”

Karkat inhales, and you can almost hear his teeth grinding together from here. “If you get your bony, rank-ass human body back upstairs right fucking now I won’t tell Dave you’re doing this again,” he says, restrained anger, more automatic than anything. You’ve always liked that about Karkat. He insults carelessly, and with a measure more intensity than most people would bother. You can appreciate creativity, even if it’s in the form of a somewhat obnoxious, grating on the nerves voice.

“Again implies that this is becoming a routine for you and I,” you say, set your glass down in the sink.

“I’ve had to listen to you pace the house for literal perigrees, fuckface,” Karkat groans, rubs his eyes. “You’re not exactly the silent predator you think you are.”

You are, but that isn’t really the point here. The stairs squeak even when no one is walking on them, and it’s annoying, but not life-threatening enough to complain about. Still, it IS a project, and you could use the distraction. Might be worth looking into. You should be more careful in the future, regardless.

You stare at Karkat.

He stares back, unblinking, the sclera of his eye honey yellow reflected from the faint tracks of moonlight that peek through the corners of the curtains, the dim glow of is husktop highlighting the bags under his eyes, permanent exhaustion, irritation that has settled on his brow.

“I suppose I could acquiesce the living room to you, during the night cycle,” you murmur, not unkindly. You drag your finger around the edge of the cup, watch him wince when it sings. Interesting, if unintentionally cruel. You always suspected them to have superior hearing. It makes sense, given the way they were forced to evolve all those generations on an unforgiving planet.

“If you’re being xenophobic over there, you better knock it the fuck off,” Karkat says, but he’s not looking at you, leaning over the table to grab his drink again.

“Perish the thought,” you say, and nothing more.

“Good. Now get the fuck out of my sight, Strider, before I kick your ass and take you back to Dave in pieces. See Jane try and fix that.”

“I suspect at this point in time it would still count as a Just death,” you say, walking carefully in front of the television, making sure you stay within his line of sight as you head back around the way you came, “but as it stands it might be preferable to me actually having to face Jane at all.”

He sighs, heavy, rubs a hand across his eyes again. “I can’t say I disagree with you, but go the fuck to sleep, Dirk.”

“Sir yes sir, Mr. Vantas,” you purr, drop into a low drawl you never use for the way it leaves hurt smarting across Dave’s face (and Christ, how unfair is that, to be so aware of yourself and yet unable to confront the person you hurt most).

“He does like you, you know,” he says before you reach the stairs.

You come to a standstill, hand gripping the banister, turn your head at quarter speed to stare at him.

His expression is open, neutral, twisted around to look you in the eye. “Whether you’re ready to accept it or not is up to you. You hurt your chances pretty significantly with the shit you pulled, but it’s been literal years and I’ve never seen him - do that. For anybody else.”

You stop short of biting the inside of your cheek, work the words through your head.

You, you know he likes you, of course he does, that’s a given, you can’t possibly be surprised, you can’t possibly crumble at the idea of his devotion, when you are the one who hurt him in the first place.

Eventually raise an eyebrow, all too aware of how much you’ve fucked up, in your attempts to right several things you still fully consider wrongs. “Except for you.”

“Except for me,” he murmurs, so soft you almost can’t believe him, and he’s very nearly smiling, you think.

Part of you is - well you aren’t happy, fuck, shit, do you remember what it was like? Being happy? But there is hope, crawling up the back of your throat, choking you, leaving your chest aching in a way you’re aware is entirely unhealthy.

You aren’t jealous. You are part of the problem, but you are not its solution, and you are well aware of that. You just don’t want to be in the way, you don’t want to stand in the way of this corner of happiness they’ve carved out for each other.

Oh.

Oh Christ, oh shit oh fuck, you’re in the way, aren’t you?

“I will take your hypothesis into consideration,” you tell him, and he snorts, rolls his eyes.

“You’re a hopeless idiot, you know that right?”

“I’m aware,” you say, manage something approximating a half-smile. “I’ll try harder.”

“You won’t,” he sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose in irritation. “And that’s probably going to bite all of us in the ass later, but fuck me with a fence post, if Dave wants to keep you around, I’m going to let him.”

“Do you consider me dangerous, Karkat?” you ask, selfish, narcissistic.

He stares at you, and you see the wheels turning in his head, see the way his hands flex. “I don’t think you want the real answer to that question.”

“I daresay I probably deserve it, at this point,” you murmur, but now that he’s said that, you’re not sure if he’s right or not.

“I think,” he says, hesitant. He licks his lips, and you can measure the trepidation in the lines of tension that run up his spine. “I think you’re more of a danger to yourself, than anyone. And I think that whether you want it to or not, it’s going to hurt Dave.”

Emotionally, you take that like a sledgehammer to the face.

You don’t believe he’s wrong, of course, you’re well aware of the record you have stacked up against you, and to argue the point would be futile, egregious.

So you hum, drum a hand along the banister. “I am sorry, you know. For the part I played in hurting you, and for what that meant for you and Dave.”

“Fuck you,” he says instead, flipping you off, but he turns his back on you, and you have to fight a smile.

It’s a start.

  


Dave is, miraculously, still asleep when you get back to your room.

Or at the very least, he is pretending to be.

You stop just inside the door, reach out with the remaining threads of your conscious that are still tired to your story, or perhaps it’s an ability you’ve always had, to read the way he lies there, the way you can make out the curve of his muscles under his shirt, too stiff to be genuine, elbows and knees bent at an uncomfortable angle.

“I can see you trying not to breathe normally,” you say, keep it light, keep it kind.

He doesn’t bother keeping up the facade, raises his head up almost immediately, and you can read the guilt at the corner of his mouth. “Whoops,” he monotones.

“Sorry,” you murmur, one of fifty. Always apologizing to Dave, only ever apologizing to Dave. Perhaps that is your problem, at the base of it all. “Didn’t mean for you to hear any of that.”

“Y’can always kind of hear Karkat,” he admits, rolling over and sitting up. “Most of his convos come across pretty one-sided though, when you’re trying to eavesdrop.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to admit to droppin’ eaves at all,” you snort, cross the room to sit beside him, on the edge of the too-new too-foreign too-comfortable bed.

He shrugs, makes a dismissive sound around a yawn. “I don’t really have much to hide, when s’just the three of us out here. Not to rain on your whole man of mystery and cryptid of the year deal, but I uh, kinda figure it’s also my business? I guess?”

You freeze with your hand halfway to his arm. He’s right of course, you know that, you are aware that the relationship you and Karkat have is not pretty, and that it undoubtedly affects Dave, to a point of strain. You should be trying harder, to get along with everyone else. You just don’t really know where to start (but you did, didn’t you, with Karkat, you can tolerate Karkat, you even LIKE Karkat, you just).

There is a layer of tension that lives in the space you and Dave occupy, and you hate it more with every passing day. A line you cannot cross, a line you WILL not cross, a barrier he doesn’t know how to approach. You have made so much of yourself unavailable for so long, and you are paying for that now.

But he is stubborn, Dave, always has been, and he grabs your wrist, pulls you closer.

“It’s okay,” he repeats, and he presses your hand to his shoulder, holds it there, feather light, gentle, perhaps a bit unsure. “Jesus, dude, you don’t have to be so fucking sorry all the time.”

“According to Karkat, I should,” you murmur, and you move your hand slowly, trace the line of his shoulder towards his neck, across the ribbing of his t-shirt. He doesn’t stop you, but he also doesn’t let go. You try valiantly not to feel trapped, push back against the splinters that still scrape at your innards, that balk at the idea of this intimacy, this comfort.

You brush your fingers against his throat and he makes a soft noise, something almost hurt, and you flinch back before you can stop yourself.

“Shit, sorry, fuck, I -” He inhales shakily, doesn’t try to take your hand back, and you are very still as he reaches out towards you, grabs the front of your godtier shirt. “Sometimes I still.... remember.” He draws his pointer fingers across your throat, a straight line, just below the Adam’s apple, and you shudder, close your eyes.

It’s repulsive, perhaps, how you still long for it, how you dream of the version of yourself Dave had to let go. There is nothing inherently beautiful about the idea of killing yourself, but it lives in the back of your mind like a pleasant dream, a contingency plan, if it was him, if it could just be him -

“Stop,” he says, tugs on your collar until you lean closer. There’s a wild look in his eyes, panic, perhaps fright. You’ve scared him, maybe. It doesn’t sit well with you. “You don’t have to - please don’t - not right now?”

“Sorry,” you mumble against his lips, sink into the idea of him, the chill of his fingers where they’re fisted in your shirt, how he wants you, just the way you are, how someone finally, truly wants you.

It’s a dangerous idea to let you get away with, the way you are, as if your ego needs the boost, but there is something pure in the way you care about Dave, in the way you want to please him, how you’d do anything for him. How you know you can count on him, his nobility, his kindness. It feels good, when Dave kisses you, when he touches your cheek with hesitation, like it’s still the first time.

“You should sleep,” you tell him when he draws back, long enough to pull you down onto the bed beside him. You go willingly, watch elbows and knees to avoid bruises. You should get a new bed. This is getting ridiculous. You’re not teenagers anymore. “I shouldn’t have woken you, it’s late, you should -”

Dave kisses you again, pushy, demanding, and the message is obvious.

“Shut up,” he says anyway, like you won’t get it. He’s smiling when he knocks his head against yours, and you think you like him better this way, sans shades, eyes drooped, soft with sleep. “I know that might be literally, physically, and probably meta-fucking-physically impossible for you, but you could at least fuckin’ try for like, five goddamn minutes. It won’t kill you.”

“It very well might,” you say. “Those are untested waters, Dave, there’s a small chance that the entirety of our lives could fall apart from my silence alone.”

“That’s a long-ass way to say fuck you,” he says, reaching out and flicking you hard on the nose. It’s a habit he got from Roxy, and you do not appreciate it.

“If you want to use me as a pillow you can just ask,” you say dryly.

“Fuck no,” he snorts, grabbing you by the back of the neck (this time you don’t shiver, and feel pride for it) and guiding you down so your head lays on his chest. He digs his fingers into your hair and keeps them there, keeps you there. “I’m gonna be your goddamn pillow and you’re gonna like it. This is some romantic-ass shit I’m pulling out of my ass right now, you should be impressed. You want to cuddle? Fuck you don’t even answer that question because this is my show and the answer is YES. Get hells’a comfy, bro, we’re in it for the long haul. You think you’ve had a rough time before, just wait. I will literally keep you in this headlock for as long as it takes your stupid ass to calm down and go the fuck to sleep.”

“I haven’t really slept at all, lately,” you sigh, but you press your ear down against his sternum anyway, will your body to go lax at his side. You are careful as you slip your hand onto his chest, feel his heartbeat under your fingertips as they wrap into the fabric of his shirt, let your breath match the pace of his until it’s even, until a modicum of your stress melts away.

Dave drags his hand through the tangles of your hair, washed but unruly, always, and he makes a sound, small and soft, not quite a sigh in return. “I know,” he whispers, and his fingers curl there, at the base of your skull. You hum approval, and he massages in light circles. “It’s okay.”

There is absolutely nothing okay with the way you are, and how you’ve been continuing on, but you suppose that is just something you will need to work on, given time.

“Can hear you thinking from here, dude,” he says, taps your head playfully with his other hand.

You grunt, smoosh your cheek further against him. You start to idly pick at his shirt, but he swaps you, and eventually caves and covers your hand with his own. “I can’t say it’s something I’ll ever be able to change, nor, in fact, one of my more negative traits.”

“I think it’s probably one of your worst fuckin’ traits,” he scoffs, and you find something soothing, listening to the resonance of his voice in his chest. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t learn to deal with it, or we can’t like, figure it out together or whatever. If you want to, I mean. I want to. I know it’s a little - I know we’re - but I want to.”

He’s trying, you realize. After all the shit you put him through, he’s trying to hard for you, adjusting to your lack of sleep, letting you hide on the roof when his friends (your friends) come visit, never pushing the issue, even though he probably should. He’s practically bent over backwards to make you comfortable, and you dig just a little deeper into your own self-loathing, though you realize of course that it was not his intent.

“Stop,” he groans, flicking you on the forehead.

You snap your head to glare at him, though perhaps it’s more of a pout than anything.

Or would be, if you completely understood how to do that with your face at all.

“Ow,” you deadpan.

“You’re an idiot,” he says.

“So you agree with Karkat, then,” you say, drop your chin down hard enough between the ribs that he winces, but doesn’t protest.

“Not - exactly. I mean, it’s pretty clear you’re all fucked up in the head, and I know now that you were for - for a long time, before all of this happened. But I think I could have done more, and that it’s probably not all your fault, actually? Like.” He drops his head back to look at the ceiling. “I understand, to a point, that no matter what I could have done to keep you, maybe you wouldn’t have let me? And maybe that’s not really okay, and maybe I shouldn’t have...” He looks at you, face painted in pain, and you long, again, to reach out, to smooth his worry away. “Shouldn’t have clung to you, to the idea of you, like I did. Like maybe if I just told you before about - everything. Karkat, Jade, just. All of it. The whole thing. Maybe it wouldn’t have gone all wrong.”

“Far be it from me to label anyone a pot, let alone a kettle,” you say, reach out, so so hesitant, brush the hair from his eyes. And they’re so pretty, those eyes, red and alive, even with his brow furrowed, expression taut. “But I rather think unfair, for you to even conceptualize the idea that you could have done anything to stop me when I was like that.”

Dave sucks in air and when he lets it out, it comes shaky, stuttered. He smiles and you see a piece of the man you watched in videos, on old television records, years in the past. “You’re still a bit like that, though, aren’t you?”

And fuck, it hurts for him to see that in you, for anyone to see the twisted mess of jagged edges all wrapped around your soul, like barbed wire, like broken glass.

“Yes,” you say, because to lie to him now would be unforgivable. “But there are days now, where I don’t want to be.”

“Dirk.” He says your name with a softness no one else ever has, reverent, undeserved love, adoration, and the bit in your stomach grows more for it.

“I know, I’m sorry,” you say, a third time, and when he cups his hand on your face, you turn into it, brush your lips against his palm. “Sorry, I’m sorry.” Four times, five. However many it takes. However long it takes for him to believe it.

Dave licks his lips, thumbs the hollow under your eye, and you think he’ll tell you to stop again, beg you not to do this to yourself. “Let’s go to bed,” he says instead, and you only hesitate a moment.

There’s so much you should say, want to say, want him to understand, but when you see him there, so soft and warm, you choke on your words.

You nod, untangle yourself from him and roll over, away, so he can’t watch you spiral like a fucking idiot.

You aren’t expecting him to roll with you, don’t expect him to wrap an arm over you and press his face between your shoulder blades, and you stiffen, don’t mean to, try to relax.

He muffles a laugh against you, presses a loud, smacking kiss there, against your spine. “It’s okay,” he says again, strokes a hand along your arm, your side. “Go to sleep, Dirk. I’m here, I’ll be here.”

You hold very still, struggle against the way your breath wants to shake, the way you want to curl away, would rather sleep on the floor, would rather spend the morning pacing the floors, dwelling, thinking in circles until you feel yourself break apart.

It’s what you’re good at, breaking. Always has been.

He falls asleep before you, he always does, but it’s the fact that he tries that keeps you there, it’s the cool hands against your arm, pressed to your stomach, that lets you close your eyes, lets you rest, if only for the moment.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dirk has one friend.  
> Or rather, a person he perceives to be his friend.  
> She might just agree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Henlo I'm back again thank y and also god im sorry
> 
> Warnings for discussion of past suicide and lots of other shit, just real typical nasty me stuff, and also Dirk being Mean Meat Dirk bc he just won't quit  
> ps i'm obsessed w dirk and rose interacting and no one is surprised bc i'm me

“I’m not sure I see it from your perspective, but I suppose that is simply the way it has always been, hasn’t it?” Rose puts your tea down on the coffee table and goes around to sit on the couch, drops straight onto your ankles with zero qualms and all the grace and care of a sack of bricks.

She’s heavy as fuck like this, still in her robot form, and she fuckin’ knows it, too, but you try not to grimace, and don’t bother to shift away. You’ve got a plan drawn up to get her back to normal, but she’s taken quite the shine (pun unintended) to the control it’s given her, and until she untangles your insane web (you’re only a little bitter) you suppose she doesn’t mind staying this way for a tad longer than expected.

“I do not,” she says primly. “I cannot say anyone else in my life is happy with my choice, as I’m sure you’re well aware -” You are, in fact, and while you stand by the decision, the fallout has not been what you’d call convenient. “But I think they may grow to understand, given time, and perspective when I have fixed your errors.”

Your errors.

It grates against your ego, to hear her talk about them that way, all the hard work you put into pulling all those strings, but you’re happy to have Jane free from you, even if she does exist now halfway across the world, in a version of the human kingdom that has no need of you. She’s better off that way, and (you hope) happier.

You selfishly hope (again) that given more time, and perhaps the distance, that she will expand her business back to somewhere more familiar. You suppose it’s a bit much, to ask her to move into John’s house, deep in the recesses of No-Longer-Washington, surrounded on all sides by salamanders instead of people, but at least Jade and Terezi are with him now, for as long as that arrangement works.

You should probably ask how John is doing.

You did, after all, witness his death and rebirth. Something of a Lazarian figure, that one.

“That isn’t a word,” Rose tells you.

“It can be if I want to,” you say. “I’m a god, I can do whatever I want.”

“You did do whatever you wanted,” she says, not unkindly, places a hand that’s cold as ice in the center of your back. “And it did not work out well for you. I’d warn you to mind yourself, but I think you spent quite enough time doing so without anyone else’s help.”

She’s right, but you resent her tone.

“John is fine, by the way. No thanks to you. Jane never needed a push for her family, Dirk. You should have known that.”

“I did, I think,” you murmur, face pressed into the cushion. “I just think I probably didn’t care.”

You didn’t enjoy watching John die, of course. Out of everyone, you can always be sure he is a good one. Just. Better, in his distance from you. Your friends could all use the break. You can hardly blame them.

“And yet you do,” Rose says, and there is something very human in the way she moves her hand across your back, a touch that’d be soothing if it were anybody else.

You do find solace in the familiarity of her presence, in the assurance that Rose will never be you, and that she will neither pull nor push you in either direction, regardless of what you do, simply content to watch you squirm.

“You should let go, eventually,” you say, even though you don’t have to. Some of your best days together are spent in a one-sided silence, and there’s reprieve in that, in being excused from the conversation. She’s quite good at playing along, Rose. You curl your hands around her pillow and turn your head to the side, though you suspect she can hear you just fine. “I don’t actually know how long that body can sustain you. I did plan for the eventuality of your release, but this situation wasn’t meant to be long term.”

“How long do you figure is ‘long term’ for a god?” she asks dryly.

You hum, irritated, but don’t answer. “You should really just let me show you how all that shit works. If you can take care of the tank by yourself, I won’t even need to come back around at all, an’ y’all can move back into the city proper like none of this ever happened.” You pause, lick your lips. “Barring the obvious.”

“Kanaya is thankful that I am home, Dirk,” she says, voice kindness tinted hollow. “And I suspect she may be invariably unhappy here, in the long run. But we are family, and I quite frankly couldn’t stand the idea of leaving you alone with Dave and Karkat without at least some form of supervision.”

“You mean leaving Dave ‘n Karkat alone with me,” you grun, rotate your ankle to keep the circulation going.

“Perhaps,” she says. “Perhaps not.”

You consider asking where Kanaya goes, when you come here to lament (hiding, what you’re doing is hiding) but figure it’s better not to know. The familiarity you crave comes from Rose’s company, not her partner’s, and you feel little to no guilt at all, hoarding her attention. You’re lucky Rose will even allow you an audience, given your past, and quite frankly it’s pathetic how often you find yourself here, grasping pathetically for armchair therapy while avoiding your somewhat tepid home life.

“I really don’t understand your hesitance to talk to him about this,” Rose sighs, pushing off the couch and around the other side of the table to sit. She has this horrible chair that you aren’t entirely sure was bought at all (you suspect it to be alchemized), and she’s so fuckin’ smug about it, legs folded in a way you find strikingly, enviably human.

There are moments where you feel you look less alive. This is one of them.

“You and he have been living together for months now, with what I imagine is no doubt plenty of opportunities to speak to each other about all manner of things. Dave is nothing less than annoyingly verbose at times, and I think I am not wrong in guessing that the two of you are capable of turning yourselves in circles for hours at a time.”

You snort, tuck your arm under the pillow to prop up your head.

“Last I checked,” Rose says carefully, watching you with sharp, glowing eyes, “you’re both still in the process of splinter shedding, correct?” You grunt affirmation, and she nods. “I am aware it is uncomfortable, and that certain... memories can surface from time to time, but from what I’ve gained in my experience, residual attachment to doomed timelines is common among all who went godtier. There is no fear to be had there.”

“I ain’t afraid of a doomed timeline,” you snap, and wish you hadn’t. You’ve long outgrown your right to talk to Rose like that, or (she gives you a smug look somehow, and you don’t scowl at her for it in return) really in any capacity at all. Still, because you’re an asshole, you press forward. “If it were anything so simple as the act of watching him die, I might not be so concerned.”

“You say simple as if it wouldn’t shake you to your very core,” she tells you.

You scoff, roll over to stare at her ceiling. You remember Jane’s ceiling had stars on it, once upon a time. Probably a bit too whimsical for the Lalonde-Maryam abode. The thought is almost enough to distract you. “There is something... more to it.” You crack the knuckles of your hand idly, though you know it’s a familiar tell. “I can feel it in there, I just can’t tell if -” if it’s me.

You’re having a hard time lately, peeling apart the pieces of yourself that belong to you, to the version of you that you should be, and it’s getting more difficult every day to discern what that means, to separate, to halve yourself and come out the other side with something whole, and you don’t know if you should continue. You are cruel, you are unkind, but there are countless versions of that cruelty, and they blur inside you like fruit in a blender, until you’re so mashed up into every version of yourself that you can no longer tell which way is up.

You are the Destroyer of Souls, you are fractured pieces of many wholes, and you are, much to your own dismay, entirely unsure how to handle the mess you’ve created.

“Hm,” she says.

“Hm,” you repeat, cock an eyebrow.

“Yes, hm.” Rose drums a hand on the arm of her chair with practiced ease, human movement that she needn’t bother with, but you reckon gives her a sense of comfort. She wouldn’t have to deal with it at all, if you had not taken that away from her. “Have you considered accepting them? As part of yourself."

You let out a derisive snort, push yourself upright. “And what would be the point in that? Collecting fuck all narrative relevance and ending up back where I started? Think I’ll pass.”

“Is that what you’re afraid of?” she asks, needling, pinpoint accuracy, and you freeze, elbows locked and fist wrapped into the edge of the couch cushion. “Hm,” she says again, and you resent it, that tone, the simplicity of her expression. “I see.”

“I didn’t say anything,” you say, bitter, acrid on your tongue. Anger burns through you like a hot iron, pressed to the base of your spine, discomfort in its familiarity.

“You don’t always need to, Dirk. You are not so hard to read, when you let down a barrier or two.”

“Is that your advice?” you ask wryly, grab the tea even though you know it’s still hot, and hate the way it tastes, never sweet enough, never quite right. You almost miss the bitter sludge you used to drink on the ship. Push that down. You aren’t really supposed to be missing the ship at all. You should be tired of coffee, anyway, after those two years you spent together. “That I need to be more vulnerable?”

“Is that such a ridiculous idea to you?” she snorts, a metallic note that rings through her chassis. There is some measure of discomfort, now that you’re (almost) yourself, watching her sit there, unable to truly eat, to drink, to feel. “Most people practice vulnerability of a sort when they are involved in any kind of relationship with another person, regardless of romantic orientation or lack thereof. Do you see yourself above the idea of human needs? Above the concept of a healthy social circle?”

You don’t saying, mouth twisting down in displeasure.

She laughs at you, a hollow, borderline mirthless sound. “You cannot possibly venture to make your relationship work with Dave, of all people, if you’re unwilling to communicate with him. Look at what happened with Jade.”

You are well aware of what happened with Jade. You are not looking to become a second casualty of that, but perhaps it is time you stop, perhaps it’s time for you to pull away, because Dave gets too attached, before -

“You can’t do that to him,” she snaps. “Not again. Lord, Dirk, do you have any idea what you did to him?”

You do not flinch, but your lip curls, and you are careful to keep your tone even when you reply. “Our personal feelings were not pertinent to my mission.”

“Weren’t they?” she says sharply.

You sip your tea in obedient silence.

“It seems more than anything, more than the seeding of a planet for a session, which, might I add, is an interesting coincidence, that you decided our Earth could not serve as that platform until well beyond our passing -”

“The timeline had to be consistent -”

“More than anything,” she speaks over you, “your goal seemed to be, quite singularly, your own demise. Am I incorrect?”

“No,” you say, spit it bitterly, against your will.

Fuck her. Fuck Rose.

“You needn’t bother feigning interest any longer,” she says with a horrid delight that you do not appreciate. You wish she’d stay out of your head. Or could, anyway. “We all know what you want, and you’re not going to get it, if you don’t remove your head from your ass.”

You snap your mouth shut, grind your teeth together. It isn’t Rose’s fault, of course, that you’re like this. At this point you’ve really no one to blame but yourself, but you don’t enjoy the implication, all the same. “You know,” you try, keep your tone even, your face flat, “Karkat said the same thing.”

She smiles, and you find yourself wishing it was friendlier. “He has a point.”

You hum, shoot her a look, which she promptly ignores. You consider criticizing her, decide against it because all it will do is turn the two of you in circles for hours, and you think she may actually be trying to help, for once, and you’re not fucked up enough yet that you can’t see the merit in that.

You just don’t know if you’re worth it.

“It’s alright to be anxious, Dirk,” she says, and it is something like kindness. “To be concerned about how others view you. I imagine that is especially true, for someone like you.”

“I don’t get anxious like that anymore,” you say, keep your eyes down. “I’m not a child.”

“Anxiety experienced in one’s adulthood often differs significantly from their youth, but that does not make it any less severe,” Rose says, a counterpoint you don’t like, but can’t argue with. “Age has very little to do with it at all.”

You reel yourself in before you make another error, before you lash out like a child because you lack control, or can no longer handle the control you have at all. You bite your tongue, crack your knuckles until it hurts. “I suppose it isn’t that I am attempting to sabotage myself,” you begin, though it feels disingenuous, given the way you’ve been acting, how you,

How you pull away from Dave, every time, even as you’re leaning in, even when you kiss, even when he reaches for you, even when you want to, to touch him, to hold him, you cannot allow yourself that kindness, do not deserve it.

“You’re being irrational, Dirk,” Rose says, too many levels of pity, too much good for you to handle.

You try (struggle) not to pull away, to curl into yourself and let the anger, the resentment, eat away at your ego until you’re nothing but viscera smeared across the floor.

“On some level I am aware of that,” you say, and it feels foolish, stupid, pathetic. “I know that Dave has no problem with my presence, though I doubt he craves it nearly half as much as you all like to imply, but to say I am not an intruder, to frame it in a way that does not at least put some of the blame on me, for all the shit I put them through, how I insisted so much upon -”

Your jaw snaps shut and you do bite your tongue, hard enough that you see white for a moment, feel the tang of copper flood your mouth.

“How you pushed them together,” Rose coaxes.

You swallow, fight for the words.

Perhaps that isn’t so far off, perhaps that makes

sense, it might make sense that you would feel guilty, of course you would, though Dave did break free, didn’t he, he kissed Karkat of his own volition, you weren’t in control of that, and you’ve done nothing since then to influence their direct interactions.

But still, you.

“I reckon I simply feel as though my presence within their home makes for a -”

Problem.

You’re a problem.

Rose’s face is stoic, even for the 'bot. “It is your home as well, Dirk. You do realize that, I hope.”

You shrug, feel petulant. Of course you fucking know that. The ridiculousness of the whole thing is hardly lost on you, living in your strip of neutrality, on the edge of what once was Cantown proper, a brand new home with the mishmashed architecture of a human and troll hive.

You miss your apartment, more than anything, the one piece of solitude you built for yourself, an unapproachable tower in the middle of the consort kingdom, but at this point you hardly think they’ll let you go back. You know that Dave would find you there, and that he’d be disappointed you ran away again.

You only successfully manage to maintain the facade because she allows you this one thing.

You should be grateful.

You _should_ be concerned that you come across as bitter, instead, but Rose is quite familiar at this point, with the type of man you are, and the idea of hiding no longer applies to her, now that she has elevated to, and surpassed, your level.

You are, however, a mangled version of proud.

“If Dave did not believe in you, you would not be sitting here today,” Rose says as she climbs to her feet. “I am not saying this to threaten you, though you are welcome to perceive it as such, but that is the truth of the matter.”

You crack a smile that doesn’t make it to your eyes. “Are you saying that you played no part in my defense at all?”

She hesitates a moment, and it’s an odd thing to watch a robot do, to see the way her whole body goes still, how she doesn’t blink, though she can, how her fingers tighten almost imperceptibly on the arms of the chair. “I did what I did because I believed it to be the best path for our family,” she says, and there is finality to it, a tone that leaves no room to argue. “Whether or not you see the merit in that is entirely your own problem, and something I hope, one day, given time, you will come to terms with.”

“And if I said I believed it was in your best interest to kill me?” And you say it with no measure of love, mirthless, a simple fact, laid out to satisfy your curiosity.

She stands in the doorway to the kitchen and drums a hand on the frame, a familiar pattern, a tick you share. “There are people who care about you, Dirk. That means something.”

But you don’t want it to, you don’t want to mean anything to anyone, some days, most days, you want to rest, you want to _stop_ , you want to _be_ stopped.

And you have, to a point, haven’t you?

You’ve been neutralized in the worst way possible, kindness and love offered instead of logic and cruelty.

You find it all so intensely unsatisfying, frustrating, infuriating, indignation and shame that wells up in the pit of your stomach, like you’re being cock-blocked, in a way, you guess, but the only release that won’t come is your death.

“Don’t be morbid,” Rose snorts at you, and then she finally steps away, disappears into the kitchen. “Are you hungry at all? Kanaya is on her way back in, she will be here momentarily, and I believe if you ask nicely she may even allow you to stay for dinner.”

You cluck your tongue, try not to make a face. As if you can eat at all when you’re like this. It’s a nice concept, in theory. Sitting down with Rose and her wife for a meal, shared at an appropriate time with two people who care very much for each other.

Not to mention that Dave will be heading back home now, after a day doing whatever asinine song and dance he does with Jade and John (and he deserves it, doesn’t he, after watching his best friend come back from the dead, after they both suffered in their own ways for so long), and Karkat will be waking soon, or at the very least will have been up for long enough that your presence garner an unfavorable response.

You could stand to avoid them both awhile longer.

“That isn’t a yes or no, Dirk,” Rose calls, as dry as she can. “I will prepare a plate for you and you can decide, with your own free will, whether or not you wish to eat it.”

“I appreciate the sentiment,” you sigh, drop your head back against the couch. “If not the passive-aggressive jab attached to it.”

“I could always call you father again, if you like.”

You twist your mouth in a frown she cannot see but have no doubt she can feel. “I very much do NOT like, thanks.”

“If I could truly laugh like this, Dirk,” she says, thrill and delight, “I would.”

“I just bet,” you mutter, rake a hand down your face. Maybe you used to be more fun, at some point. Maybe there was a time in your life that you did not feel like a consistently wet blanket, the need to fix, to preen, to pluck, but you can’t remember, you cannot remember, and it had to be before AR, didn’t it, with his tendency to overcorrect, with your disinterest in ever being misunderstood.

You wonder how you maintained all those years as a hoax of a Texan, broken staccato’d accent all alone in your house where no one would ever hear you.

You hear the door open with your head in your hands and there is still an empty place inside you where a white coat used to fit, the edge of omnipotence that burned you from the inside out, but you don’t need that to know you’ll see Kanaya when you look up, and you keep your face completely flat as she takes you in, watch her mouth curl down in distaste.

You have that effect on most people.

Or at least have that effect on your friends.

Or people who used to be your friends, anyway.

“Hey,” you say, when the clock ticks forward and you’re both just staring at each other.

“Hello,” she says, entirely displeased. You like to think Rose told her you were coming, or that she warned her that you’d still be here, at the very least. It’s not as though you think Rose beyond keeping secrets, you just believe her to be a better person than you.

“Welcome home, Kanaya,” Rose’s voice drifts from the other room, and you are given reprieve from her watchful eye. “Did you manage the grocery list alright? I did try my hand at Alternian, but I have never been especially good at writing your alphabet.”

“Yes,” Kanaya says slowly, keeps her eye on you as she crosses in front of the television. “It was not as bad as Karkat’s, honestly, and after all the years of reading English, I hardly think I have room to complain about such a small thing.” It amuses you, you note, that just like Karkat, she never leaves her back to you.

“Oh well, I’ll be certain to try harder next time,” Rose sighs, poking her head out to give her a kiss and take the bags. “I can hardly give Dave something else to lord over my head.”

It is sad, you think, watching Kanaya’s lipstick stain the edge of Rose’s mouth.

You did offer to return her to normal.

Several times.

You guess no one is really speaking to Jane at the moment, though, aside from John, maybe Jade.

That’s your fault, too.

“I don’t think it’s necessary, given your godtier abilities,” Kanaya says, head craned back towards you. “I can make do just fine, and it isn’t so much a bother as endearing, I think.”

“Well,” Rose murmurs, smiling, and then she’s off again. “Would you like to assist me? For an organic being, Dirk is entirely useless at cooking, you would not believe the amount of housework I had to do.”

“Oh, I doubt that I would find myself incredulous,” Kanaya says, and is she smirking? She definitely is. Okay that’s. Fair. You guess.

You could argue, but there’s no point in making anyone angrier at you, and you’re kind of in a place where you deserve to be dunked on, besides.

You lay back against the couch as they leave, drop your head to the cushions. You do need to go home, eventually. You’ve no doubt that Dave will text Rose, if you’re late, and Karkat won’t forgive you missing another dinner entirely, because it’ll only prove his point, and you’ll have to hear about it at 4 AM.

You could hardly stand to be chewed out. Again. The idea is revolting.

Or if not revolting, at least embarrassing.

You feel eyes on you first. It’s a trait you haven’t always had, haven’t yet lost, the feeling of being watched, spiders up your spine, the paranoia that rests in your bones, discomfort and unfamiliarity.

Eventually it reaches the point of unbearable and you crack an eyelid, lift your head. Kanaya stands in the doorway again, and she looks uncomfortable, maybe a bit terse.

“Hey,” you say again, instead of, _“Can I help you?”_

“Rose invited Roxy over for dinner,” she says, instead of _“Hello"_ again, and you freeze, feel yourself ice over, fingers going numb in a heartbeat, somebody else’s death layered over the top of your own anxiety. “I thought you might like to know, on the off chance that you decided to ‘bounce’ as Dave is so fond of saying.”

“Right,” you say, rising to your feet, unfolding all your limbs in slow motion, ignore the way your heart drops straight into your stomach like a ball of lead. “Thanks for the head’s up. But I must say, I am surprised you’d bother.”

“Rose was not going to tell you,” Kanaya says primly. “She believes exposure to be the best solution. But I am familiar with the concept of being unable to face someone, and when it comes down to it....” She twists her hands together, presses her lips thin. You imagine there is plenty she would like to say to you. She does not say it. “If one of us is going to be unnecessarily cruel,” she says, in a tone almost gentle, “I would prefer it was not me.”

You can’t argue with that, but you are a touch impressed with her poise. There is a good chance you underestimated her, and perhaps that is just part of your downfall. There will certainly be a day that you will need to apologize to Kanaya.

Today is not, tragically, that day.

“Well,” you say, catch yourself in the door frame. “Thanks anyway.”

“Yes,” she says bitterly, nose scrunching up as though she smells something particularly foul (it’s probably your bullshit). “You’re... welcome.”

You let the door drop closed behind you and launch straight off Rose’s porch without another word. You feel some version of guilty for your escape route; you know she won’t like it, and she’ll chew you out for it later, too, but there are some things, when it comes down to it, that you just cannot bring yourself to face.

It really is days like this, you think as you drop down on the roof of your shared hive, that you wish you lived alone again.

No one to report to, no one to wait up, to leave the light on, to ask, “Where the fuck have you been”, 20th century movie style, turning on the conveniently placed lamp at the most dramatic moment. Just the silence of your apartment and the buzz of your old-fashioned fluorescent bulbs, hours to focus on a plan that you (and you alone, or you and all your splinters, swallowed up inside you, an amalgamation, a living tomb) managed to see to fruition, almost in its entirety.

Perhaps one day someone will find the egg, the seed, never planted, ready to be made fertile, and they will know what to do.

You suppose you may not live long enough to see.

It doesn’t matter, now.

Nothing matters now.

And you should care more, you think, but you’ve let yourself become so selfish, shedding all the parts that you did not need (they were killing you, they were burning you from the inside out, you know, you could feel it, the soul destroyer tripled, quadrupled, multiplied in infinite amounts as time ticked by like heartbeats) and leaving a young man, a tired man, a dead man, who knows, who knows, you don’t know, but god, you want to sleep, you’d give anything for a full night’s sleep, give anything to know you’ve done the right thing.

And there are still days, where you’re sure what you chose is correct, even now, even in all the parts and people that you let go wrong, when you loosed your hand and left things to chance.

You were a fool, then, are still a fool, now.

It is difficult for you to explain how little you feel you deserve this second chance.

How little you think you want it (some days, most days).

You don’t bother checking downstairs, though you can hear Karkat’s heavy footsteps on the landing, more of a warning, you’re sure, than anything, and head straight for your bedroom. Your freedom will be short-lived, but you can savor the quiet for a moment, though you’re sure with your luck (or lack thereof) that Dave will find you soon.

And he does, not ten minutes later, enough time for you to drag on your hero shirt, an item of comfort despite the years it has served you.

You doubt you could ever favor anything else half as much.

Well.

Perhaps not just anything.

He knocks on the door, a quick shave-and-a-haircut, and the utter ridiculousness of the situation is not lost on you, him asking permission to enter his own room. “Hey,” he says when you do look up, and you have to fight against the flood of warmth upon seeing his face, familiar stoicism draped in red.

“Hey,” you say, offer the beginning of a smile, take an extra moment to finish making the bed.

“Didn’t think you’d make it home for dinner,” he says. “I mean, not to sound like a scorned housewife, but I kinda had the impression you were avoiding me or something.”

Dave’s face is practiced disinterest, but you read it in his body language, arms crossed, defensive, the angle of his lean against the door frame too casual, too perfect. He’s beautiful like this, you think, frustrated, corner of his mouth turned into a not-quite frown, fingers flexing, desperate to tap out a rhythm against his sleeve.

But you do feel guilty, deep in your gut, an admittance of your mistake trying desperately to crawl its way out of your throat.

“I was with Rose,” you say simply, feeling exposed now, nowhere to run, Dave blocking the only logical exit.

Stop, push that down.

You can’t run from Dave.

Shouldn’t, anyway.

“I knew you were out today, it slipped my mind to mention my own excursion. I was just - bored, I suppose.”

“Pesterchum does still exist, y’know,” he drawls, tipping his head in a gesture almost entirely Rose.

“I’m aware,” you say, amused. “I did help invent the initial internet system we use, after all.”

“Yeah,” he says, but he’s not smiling. He drops his eyes, picks at the door frame.

Oh.

He’s uh.

He’s _actually_ mad at you.

“If she didn’t tell me she was havin’ company for dinner,” he continues, tone short, flat, “I wouldn’t have even known where to look.”

“Yeah,” you say, offer a shrug. You don’t really know how to respond. The list of shit you need to apologize for is long, but you would hardly classify this as worth the effort.

Dave sighs, shoulders drooping, and all at once his posture is loose, though he keeps his mouth in a thin line, neutral, maybe a touch exasperated. “Gonna be real, man, I’m surprised she lets you come over at all.”

“She was my only friend for two years,” you say, don’t know if you’re lying or not. You drop down on the bed and get to work untying your shoes. Only animals wear shoes in the house. “I suppose I simply became so used to her company that I hardly think twice about it.”

“She didn’t really give me the impression you were friends at all,” Dave says wryly. He walks with purpose, and you think that might just be your favorite thing about him, the way he grew when he was apart from you, how unafraid he is to truly be himself now, after all this time. “I kinda got the idea that she wanted to kill you, or at least kick your ass to eternity and back.”

“Both, maybe,” you murmur as he reaches out, combs the hair back from your forehead with long, gentle fingers. “I rather think I deserved it.”

Dave holds your face in both hands like he’s looking for something, nails pressed into your jaw. He tips your chin up and you let your head fall back, all too willing, ready to please in an instant. He frowns, a line that pulls at the corner of his mouth. When he speaks his voice is quiet but sturdy, confidence laced with concern. “You can’t keep doing this, you know.”

You don’t move to jerk away, don’t touch, just stare, shades on shades, dark enough now that you couldn’t see his eyes through them, even if you wanted to. “I’m confident at this point that it’s simply an inevitability. My downfall is predestination, Dave. I’m not afraid of that sentence.”

“I don’t think it means what you think it has to mean,” he says, skates his thumb across your cheek with reverence that could make you crumble. “Why do you act like you don’t have a choice?”

“I don’t,” you whisper, with something like a smile.

His eyebrows furrow, confusion, frustration. “There’s always a choice.”

“Not for me,” you say, take one hand, guide it to your mouth so you can kiss his palm, once, twice. “Never for me.”

“That’s bullshit.”

You shrug. “It’s not bullshit if it’s true.”

“I think you’re scared,” Dave says, and his voice wavers, but does not break. “I think you’re still doing the same fuckin’ garbage where you try to take care of everything that bothers you all by yourself and when it doesn’t work out, you’re going to beat yourself up about it.”

“Maybe,” you murmur against his skin, don’t want to look up, don’t want to face the resolve you know you’ll see there.

Dave is determined to rescue you from yourself.

You just can’t entirely figure out why.

“Well can you knock it off?” he says, laugh tinted with something you can’t place. Something sad. “I’ve been working my ass off here to make sure you don’t fuck off to parts unknown again, or isolate yourself, or shut down and commit - don’t do anything stupid. I don’t want you to do anything stupid. Again. When I’m not here.”

You still yourself for a second, roll the tape over in your head, don’t come back with anything remotely good. You are being cruel to Dave, though you don’t mean to be, and you have hurt him. Again.

You drop his hand carefully and he lets you go as you sit up straight, lean away from him. There might be some level of incredulity to your voice, masked defense, and you know immediately that it’s inappropriate. “Are you concerned I’m going to kill myself?”

Dave takes the question like you’ve physically struck him, grimacing, face morphing into something that, on anyone else, might look like tears. “Could you blame me?” he asks, and his voice is rough, crumbled around the edges.

The problem is, of course, that you could not. Cannot. You are well aware of your history, marked with your own death, and there are bits of shrapnel lodged inside you that feel like rope burn around your neck.

You aren’t particularly proud of that.

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” you say slowly, don’t know if you’re lying.

“Are you lying?” he asks, predictable, but sharp.

“I don’t know,” you say, softly, look up at himself with as much honesty as you can bare. “I don’t want to.”

“I want to believe you,” he mumbles, already reaching out again, a craving for comfort, for touch, that you never understood, before, and can’t get enough of, now. “More than anything, Dirk, I want -”

“I know,” you say, a confession shaded in uncertainty. It does hurt, deep down, that the person you care about so deeply, that you. That he cannot trust you. That you don’t know how to let him.

You sit like that together, a moment, a century, before finally pushing yourself to your feet. There is comfort in the two inches you hold over him and you press a rather indulgent kiss to the ear of his shades. “Let’s go eat dinner, huh? Are you hungry?”

“I could eat again, I guess,” he sighs, taps his head against your shoulder. You read defeat there, and struggle against the urge to hold him, to press the whole of him against you.

“Sorry,” you offer instead, and it feels like a band-aid, placed over a gaping wound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jazz hands  
> somebody stop me!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which we earn our rating, and dirk learns to stop doing... That. sort of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and so it comes to a close!  
> continued "dirk being kind of an asshole" warning and um  
> they have sex, sorry sorry sorry!

You wake up alone for the first time in four months on a Thursday morning, and you breathe in cold moisture, feel it stick to the back of your tongue. Rain patters across the roof, taps at your window in a steady beat, and you think, _Finally_ , and you think, perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad, to let yourself settle here, if it means more days like this, if it means finally getting to sleep, if it means you can let yourself have things, once in awhile.

Perhaps to let yourself live, to let the rope slide free, perhaps it _would_ be good for you, perhaps it would benefit both of you in the long run.

You certainly can’t expect to keep Dave like this, to hold him so selfishly close to your heart, when you can’t even open the damn thing.

It’s far from your worst flaw.

You roll over, paw at the other side of the bed with your eyes closed, and feel the empty spot that Dave has left behind, long gone cold.

There’s a moment of panic that you can’t quite help, your sleep-logged brain staggering to catch up, and like any other part of you, your reaction is instantaneous, as well as overkill.

You shoot up, pinpricks all over, irrational fear washing over you from your head to your toes, extremities tingling, going numb, death, you need to stop reliving his death, Christ, fuck, and you rein yourself in, take a deep breath, and curl down until your head touches the mattress. One second, two. Enough time to breathe, to think.

How grateful you are, that he’s not here to see you like this, that he doesn’t have to see you as you break apart and come back together again, as you try to dig part of yourself free, fingers tugging uselessly at a shirt that doesn’t belong to you, before you lose your grip and have to let go.

One day you might be so lucky to shake it free.

Today is not that day.

You do manage to pull yourself from your own spiral before it can truly get started, an action of defiance for no one’s eyes but your own, and know that sitting here all day will do nothing more than prolong the inevitability of your confrontation with your,

Well.

You’re not really sure.

Somewhere in there the lines between your relationship blurred into something else entirely, but you’re not entirely sure if you’re ready to admit that.

You rise to your feet in a whisper of movement, drag your shirt on as you go. Dave certainly would not protest, and the cool humidity sits against your skin like a layer of cooling sweat, an uncomfortable clamminess you cannot shake, but you sincerely doubt that Karkat will appreciate your nudity, and you are, despite your reticence, making an effort to score brownie points.

The newness of the house still throws you off, the slick feeling of the new wood against your bare feet, the brightness of the walls without your shades. You grab them from the nightstand (where they usually sit tucked beside Dave’s, the only time you feel safe without them, and how truly pathetic, how far you’ve fallen) and after a moment longer of bathing in the pale grey light, make your descent.

Certainly for anybody else there would be little to worry about, but for you, for someone who once had the taste of total control extending beyond his own consciousness, the unknown is, in technical terms, pantshittingly terrifying.

It’s an adjustment you must simply learn how to live with.

There is a line you have drawn for yourself, in the space that exists between your relationship with Dave and his own with Karkat, and the privacy that you allow them is something bordering on absolute. There is some truth, after all, to Rose’s words, and your fear of accidental interference now, when the wounds are still so fresh, is admittedly crippling.

You only wish for him to be happy, but you couldn’t bear to step between them, when you know how easily their peace exists without you.

You are careful on the landing, and if you abuse your abilities as a godtier (and how lucky, for you to hold onto your powers, for you to be given the chance to fall back together in the worst possible way, and Christ, it’d be so easy, it’d be so so easy), there is no one there to see you lift off the floor and fly a half-inch above the stairs as you go.

They’re standing in the kitchen when you come to a halt, fingers ghosting the edge of the banister, and you manage a smile, curled up on its own, something like affection, perhaps a skewed version of pride.

Dave and Karkat do not kiss in front of you.

You have always imagined this to be your own fault, for your pushing, for the part you played in nearly ruining the best thing either of them has ever had (and what does that make you, but the worst), but perhaps it’s not so simple. Who are you to say, unable to even talk to one of them, let alone both.

Still, there is something delicate to the two of them, Karkat’s hand so gentle on Dave’s face, Dave’s braced against the counter, their heads tipped at an angle that displays comfort, more than desperation. You don’t wish to interrupt, of course, and it’d be easier still for you to go back the way you came. They’d hardly miss you.

“If you think further voyeurism is going endear you to me any more than than your other attempts, you’re in for a rude awakening, Dirk.” Karkat’s voice cuts through the thin tap of rain upon the front windows, and you nearly suck in air, hold yourself so completely still as not to flinch.

They’re both staring at you now, Dave’s lips pressed into a thin line, Karkat’s brows raised. He doesn’t look angry, though, and that’s something.

“Sorry,” you say, offer a second smile, something hopefully less intimidating. “Was just lost in thought, there. Far be it from me to interrupt your sloppy makeout session.”

“Dude, don’t make it gross,” Dave says, wrinkling his nose. He looks embarrassed, like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, but you can’t exactly tease him when you’re the bad guy, here.

“That’s simply the nature of a SLOPPY makeout, bro,” you say instead, breathe out quiet as you cease flight, adjust your own weight so that your drop down that final step becomes a fluid movement towards the couch. “I hope you’ve let Karkat brew the coffee this morning.”

“Karkat doesn’t drink coffee,” Dave huffs, and you are grateful when he does not shy away from him, trying to reach around to get into the cupboards. “But I gotta say, that’s a rude-ass assumption you’re makin’ about both it being early enough for there to be any left, and that I’d make enough for you in the first place.”

You press your tongue against your bottom teeth and maintain an even expression as you look over your shades at him, raise an eyebrow. “Did you?”

Dave just stares. You get the impression, from time to time, that he does not think anybody is actually listening to him talk, even in his adulthood. “Did I what?”

You shouldn’t play with him like this, because you know what it can do, if you step just an inch too far to the left or right, but sometimes, you can’t quite stop yourself. “Did you make enough for me?”

“Uh,” he says, and it’s almost sweet, how he thinks looking to Karkat for answers will help.

“He hasn’t managed to make any yet,” Karkat says for him, giving a dramatic eye roll. “You should count yourself lucky.”

He’s right, but you can hardly start the coffee discourse again when you just woke up from what is, potentially, the longest sleep you’ve had in literal years.

Karkat is far from unobservant, and when he squints at you, it is just as overly expressive as everything else that makes its way across his face. “Did you seriously just wake up? As if your sleeping patterns weren’t already completely grubfucked, it’s almost noon.”

“I imagine a simple twenty-four hour reset isn’t too far beyond me,” you say, shrugging as you pull out your phone. It’s not like you have anyone to text but Rose, but you may as well workshop a few apology emails, since you can hardly go around visiting people in person.

At least, not unsupervised.

“I don’t think that’s actually your problem,” Dave says. “No offense dude, but the fact that I even got you to visit dreamland at all was fucking terrifying. I ain’t ever seen you sleep so heavy in my goddamn life.”

It is rather embarrassing, how you dropped so fast, like you were hit in the head with, say, a large wrench, but it had been several days since your last true sleep cycle, and you were due to collapse eventually. You can’t say that. “I guess I was just tired.” You offer him a thin smile and he returns it, a tick at the corner of his mouth, small but genuine.

You do not mention the way exhaustion sits just below your skin, writhing protest in your waking hours, for the way he’d worry. For the way he doesn’t deserve it, the open door to your unstoppable insomnia and personal issues.

Perhaps things would be easier, if you simply took the time to -

“Stop,” Dave says, as he and Karkat begin their routine shuffle around the kitchen in something resembling a normal weekday morning.

For someone so hellbent on wanting to return to the nocturnal cycle, Karkat bends willingly to Dave’s desire for morning time together, and considering how little you sleep, it’s not really much of a problem for you to shift and adjust in either direction.

“I didn’t say anything,” you say primly, keep your phone up so you can’t look either of them in the eye. You’re trying not to stare so much anymore. You are aware of how uncomfortable you can make people, and these two, in particular, are perhaps the last people you should be trying to upset.

“I can hear you thinking from here,” Karkat answers instead, standing by the coffee maker and keeping Dave at bay. “You’d have to possess severely damaged auricular sponge clots not to hear your jackassery when you turn it up to eleven.”

“Karkat, he’s always turned up to eleven, be sensitive,” Dave chides, trying to reach around him.

Karkat smacks his hands away and you fight a smile. He’s the real savior here; you adore Dave (obviously) but his coffee-making skills leave something to be desired. “I think the last thing he needs is sensitivity. It’s a wonder our walls haven’t broken down from the sheer force of the hoofbeast shit his brain waves produce daily. Truly, we could not have been saddled with a less sensitive hivemate if you tried, Strider.”

“He’s probably right,” you offer, folded up into the corner of the couch. “At this point in time I’m quite certain my empathy skills are lacking entirely.”

“They could use some work,” Dave admits, not entirely unkindly.

“Work is certainly a word for it,” Karkat grumbles, outright pushing Dave to hold him back. “Dave, the appreciation and value we find in your company is not extended to that shit-piss liquid you call a beverage.”

“Aww what, c’mon, I’m bomb at makin’ coffee,” he wheedles, long arms roping around Karkat’s middle. “Been perfecting this skill for straight up thirteen years, where else are you gonna find dedication like that?”

“Preferable in someone who possesses actual talent,” Karkat says dryly, but he doesn’t lean away when Dave goes in for a kiss, and you drop your eyes again to be polite.

“That’s so fucking rude,” Dave says when they part. “Dirk, are you hearin’ this? Are you hearing how unspeakably rude he’s being right now?”

Oh god not this again.

“I’m afraid I must agree with Karkat on this one,” you say, and you’re chewing on your tongue now, trying not to laugh.

The look Dave gives you is full face betrayal, but you just shake your head. You’re not falling for it. Not today.

“Dave,” you say, playful warning, “you’re terrible.”

“This is so un-fucking-fair,” he huffs, puts his hands on his hips. In nothing but heart boxers and possibly the most dreadful, old Whataburger shirt you have ever had the misfortune of seeing, it is incredibly endearing. “This is some conspiracy shit right here. I bet if I called Rose up right now not only would she agree with me, but she’d have some kind of weirdass speech ready to let you know how wrong you are.”

“Perhaps, but you should probably admit defeat, at least in this scenario,” you say, and he stomps over when you drop your phone and open your arms, a quiet offering.

Dave flops onto you in a mess of limbs and you do not laugh, but you struggle against the curve of your smile, fold your arms around his shoulders. You cuddled more when you were younger, back when you were still sixteen, seventeen, new to this world, still learning to navigate the maze of your relationship.

Perhaps you should have realized, then.

Perhaps you just weren’t ready.

“I hate you both,” he mumbles against your collar.

“I know,” you soothe, smooth your thumb along his spine. “But I imagine at this juncture that’d we’d both be extremely hard to get rid of.”

“Yeah,” he sighs, adjusts until his arms are locked around your middle. It’s not terribly comfortable, but you can hardly complain, can you? “Can’t exactly change the locks when the dude who single handedly brought the locksmithing industry back to life lives with me, even though I still think it’s -”

You put a hand over his mouth with some difficulty. “We know, Dave.”

He licks you.

You wipe it on his forehead as you tuck your arms neatly over him, but don’t rebuke him. You watch Karkat switch on the coffee pot and hide a smile in Dave’s hair as you bury your nose there.

There ain’t a lot of performative emotional shit you feel comfortable doing in front of other people, and truly, the idea still gives you hives if you think too much about it, but if it’s Dave, if it’s Dave and Karkat, you reckon you can make an allowance.

At least from time to time.

You feel Dave’s arms tighten almost imperceptibly and you realize, too late, that he’s trapping you.

Oh.

He wants to say some shit.

Probably something you don’t want to hear, or he wouldn’t be trying to hold you in place.

You could flashstep away, if you were quick enough on the draw, but all you’d do is make him flinch, and you don’t really enjoy the strain it causes.

Whatever he has to say, you’re going to hear it out, even if you don’t really want to.

“So,” he starts, and his voice sticks a little bit, like you’re kids again, hesitance he hasn’t worn properly in years. “We were thinkin’ about having Jade over for dinner. By herself, obvious, if you wanted. I mean John might come too, idk, she doesn’t really like leaving him alone, though I guess Terezi is there right now, y’know, but she’s still really fucked up about the Vriska thing so I don't’ know, she probably wouldn’t come. Or wouldn’t want to, anyway.”

“You haven’t actually asked me anything,” you say, manage not pull away, keep your face a thin line and shitty mask.

“We want you to be there,” Karkat says from the kitchen. “For dinner.”

You knew that, obviously you knew that, but it’s a struggle, not to wince, not to say _“No,”_ on reflex.

You imagine that Jade, much like anyone else, has plenty reason to hate you. Not that you’d truly know because, as it stands, you haven’t been in a room with anyone other than Karkat and Dave (or on occasion, of course, Rose and Kanaya) in several months. Your homecoming felt more like an apology tour for Dave and Rose than anything, explaining, somewhat defensively, why they couldn’t kill you, and why no, it wouldn’t help (not that they asked you, why would they) and how, while they did not have to give you a second chance, you needed one (again, not an opinion you share).

“I don’t think that’s wise,” you say eventually.

“Oh, you wouldn’t,” Karkat scoffs. “After you practically threw her at us, I bet you’d want to avoid her more than anyone.”

Your jaw snaps shut.

Sore point.

“Karkat,” Dave says, voice level, an octave lower than usual. He looks up at you over the edge of his shades. “No offense dude, but at this point, if you wanna make progress, I’m pretty sure Jade’s like, the chillest motherfucker in this joint. The joint being the earth. What I’m saying is, she’s pretty forgiving. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”

You work extremely carefully not to internalize as you sit up, slip your arms free and try to push Dave away, inch by inch. “I appreciate your concern for my social ineptitude, Dave, however I do not think it wise for me to -”

“Dirk -”

“Oh fucking bullshit,” Karkat groans, throws his hands up. “We all know you’re socially inept, it’s not the hottest news off the human kingdom press! But you can’t act like this forever. Eventually there’s shit you have to face, and I say it’s about damn time you start facing it.”

“I find that to be an interesting take coming from one of two people who just barely leaves the house,” you say, lift an eyebrow. You can tell it’s going to be a fight.

You knew it’d be a fight.

You shouldn’t have stuck around. Christ.

You use the arm of the couch as leverage and practically pull yourself from Dave’s arms until you’re standing, nowhere to run but nothing to keep you there.

“It’s okay if you’re not ready,” Dave says hurriedly, like he’s terrified you might run off again. He’s not entirely off base. “Like I can just -”

“Dave we can’t keep doing this every time someone comes over,” Karkat says, not entirely unkind. “We talked about this.”

“That doesn’t mean we’re gonna force him, dude, that’s a messed up thing to imply,” Dave says, exasperated. “You can’t make people be ready for stuff, that’s just not how we roll in this house, we promised, didn’t we?”

He doesn’t mean it as a jab at you, but it pierces your heart like a sword through the chest.

“I could leave,” you say, tone even and hollow, perhaps edging towards anxiety, “you know, if it was -”

“No,” they snap at the same time, Karkat aggravated, Dave something bordering on panic. “How many times do I have to - will you knock that the fuck off?” Karkat seethes, and you do not say sorry, though you consider the action carefully.

“Karkat,” Dave mumbles as he rises to his feet, hands flexing nervously.

They look like they’re getting ready to catch a wild animal, and perhaps that’s what you look like, unruly hair and pajamas wrinkled from sleep.

“It’s one thing for you to stalk around the house at night, acting like you’re half a moment away from bolting, but that you continue to do this shit when Dave is right there, spending all this extra energy letting you know how much he wants you, how much he enjoys having you around?”

“Karkat,” Dave tries again, louder.

“We’ve been working our asses off to make you feel welcome and you still run and hide at the tiniest sign of trouble!” You imagine, if this were a cartoon, steam would pour from his ears. “All you do is walk all over everyone else’s feelings because the only person you care about is yourself! And you know what, Strider? It sure as shit fucking shows!”

“Karkat!”

Karkat snaps his mouth closed and turns away, but you can see Dave seething now, face red, hands curled tight, and all you feel,

is shame.

And perhaps you deserve it, perhaps to feel shame is more productive, turning yourself in circles, twisting into knots, but to a point, you know, surface level, Christ, you know that’s he’s right.

“Yes,” you say, shifting onto your dominant foot. “My apologies. I believe the appropriate course of action for me, at this moment in time, would be to remove myself from the equation.”

Neither of them stop you as you ascend the stairs, one step at a time, and you are polite enough to shut out the whispered conversation that follows, closing the door and sitting on the edge of your bed, trying to remind yourself that you have lost any and all right to be angry over just about anything.

Except for the part where you are, you are angry, devastatingly so, hands shaking, spikes of white-hot rage that you’re unsure actually belongs to you. You gave up everything to be here, you lost so much, you gave up your purpose and your drive because you wanted

you wanted Dave, you wanted him to be happy, didn’t you?

But he’s wrong, isn’t he, about you, about everything that makes you YOU, cruelty coiled up inside your gut like a viper, ready to strike, to harm, to kill.

You shouldn’t be here.

You feel the strain of your presence like a box closing in around you, and you realize, somewhat hysterically, that you do not need to be here at all.

It’s startlingly easy, to walk to the window, to unlatch it and, with almost no energy at all, launch yourself straight into the air.

You hover for a moment, above the house, above the trees, the expanse of land that rolls out for miles, trees that turn to shrubs, then from shrubs to flat, dried earth. It’s muggy still, the cloying scent of rain just past, and your shirt sticks to your skin within minutes, but there is comfort to it, familiarity of growing up in the suffocating humidity.

You think about leaving, and in truth it’d be twice as easy, to go back to your workshop, back to the ship where it’s no doubt still shuttered away in the depths of the OG Skaianet facility, and you’re aware of what a mess that’d make.

The fight it would start.

The relationships you’d ruin.

You can see Rose’s house from here. You don’t know why they acquiesced to Dave’s strange bargain, to leave their estate behind to live outside of their own comfort for your sake, but it could almost be soothing, with the city in the backdrop, the few remaining occupied can homes littering the horizon. It’s kind of cute, in a way. Fanciful, if anything.

You feel, for more than a moment, incredibly homesick.

It is with ease that you make your decision. You take a breathe, beg yourself forgiveness, and take off just south, way back down towards the workshop you know will always be waiting for you.

It isn’t too far, when you hit full speed, though a transportalizer would have been faster, and you feel comforted almost immediately as your apartment comes into view.

You don’t have your keys but you hardly need them, do you, undoing the simple latch and climbing back in through the window. A lot of people wouldn’t get that. But there’s really no way up to the apartment itself unless you can fly, and you intended it to stay that way.

There’s familiarity as you crawl in over the desk, the smell of dust and the slight sting of motor oil to your nose. Your later projects remain abandoned, same as you left them, and you reach out, over the edge of the bench, and find the coiled pile of rope, just where you left it. There’s a moment of relief that no one disposed of it, or even managed to find it at all.

Okay, you’re not going to -

Listen, no one fucking panic, you’re just going to put it away. The odds of Dave finding you here are not in your favor, and the idea of him seeing it, knowing how it could trigger the particles of the Davebot, still lodged inside him like shrapnel, isn’t remotely pleasing, and you aren’t particularly in the mood to deal with the fallout (in part because you are aware it would be nuclear).

Sweeping a hand along the wall leaves your fingers smeared with dust, and you wince.

Well.

You’re already here.

May as well get to work.

It’s startlingly easy, to fall back into an old routine, and it’s immensely soothing to your nerves, the silence of the empty space, the only hum from your old fluorescent lights (Dave had scoffed when you installed them, mortified and amused all at once, but it was simply a childhood comfort to you, then, still is now) and you tidy absently, find bits and pieces of early models, of abandoned projects you never thought you’d see again.

Perhaps you shouldn’t have come here, perhaps you should have gone somewhere else.

Rose’s door is almost (really, almost) always open to you, but that’s a touch too obvious, and the chewing out won’t amount to much more than your hurt pride. You’d call Jane, but you doubt she has the same number, and you reckon she wouldn’t want to hear from you, aside.

Jake would be the closest, but you’re still not sure where to start with him, or where you even stand, so you clean your old home, breathing dust and metal, and try not to be indignant in the lift you are forcing yourself to lead.

Karkat is right, to a point. You do very much care about yourself, at least as far as your self-interest has benefited your friends in the past, may never do so again, in the future. You do not begrudge him his resentment of your behavior, but it isn’t as though you have a leg to stand on. He cares about Dave, makes him happy, even if they deny it, and you believe him to be a competent, if somewhat short-tempered individual. You trust Karkat with Dave. You can’t say that about just anybody. Wouldn’t, if asked.

You should go back.

Apologize to Karkat.

Definitely apologize to Dave.

They both deserve it, more than you’re willing to admit aloud, but to begin, to flagellate yourself before him.

Well.

None of you would like that very much, you imagine.

So you settle for cleaning, top to bottom, pick and organize every screw, every loose bolt and wayward finger joint, and it’s a solid three hours before Dave catches up to you, but you suppose late is better than never.

He crawls through the window without knocking, and you hear it dropped closed before you actually turn to see him.

“Hey,” he says, breathlessly. “Thought I’d find you here.”

You give a strained smile from your desk where you’re rolling cords into a pile of neat cords. “What a coincidence. I reckoned if I waited long enough, you’d finally show. You didn’t have to come all this way.”

“That’s not true and you know it,” Dave says, defensive, definitely a little hurt. He winces, shifting on his feet, and you wait patiently while he finds the right words. “Sorry,” he says after a moment. “That you had to see that. Karkat and I don’t usually fight about stuff.”

It wasn’t much of a fight, in your opinion, but you don’t have much experience in that department. The way you and Jake fought could win awards for how insanely silent it managed to be (on his side, at least - you were always a verbose teenager). You start with a shrug. Neutral. Calm. “It was my fault. He’s sensitive to the idea of you being hurt. That’s a normal reaction for just about anyone in a healthy relationship, Dave.”

He frowns, but you think he just looks tired “It’s not normal if it’s you.”

“The fact that it’s me should make it all the more normal,” you say without meaning to, a slip of your caustic tongue.

“You’re not him,” he snaps, then backpedals, hands flexing, breath uneven. “I mean, obviously you are, to a point, the same way we’re all each other, it’s stupid, and I know that you, you haven’t. Because I haven’t.”

You raise your eyebrows. Surprise. You didn’t think he was keeping track. You were trying not to, because you viewed it as another form of control you could hold against him, and you hated the potential. “You think we’ll manage to let them go at the same time?”

“No, but only because you’re stubborn, and because Rose thinks there might be some things that, uh.” He winces, clears his throat. “That are more permanent? Than others?”

You hum, watch his face. The idea of holding onto the piece of yourself that is still older (barely now by just seven years), that Dave is most afraid of (you think, but don’t know, how could you without asking, as if you’d dare), is not very appealing. The exhaustion that sits below your skin, the disapproval in everything you do. You’ve grown tired of it, bored, mostly frustrated. You would to let go.

You don’t know how.

“But I’m not afraid of that anymore,” Dave says, palms up as he crosses the room slowly, one step at a time. There are days where he treats you like an easily startled animal. It’d be endearing, were it not so insulting. “It’s been like thirteen years, man. I know you’re not him, you know I’m not _him_. Least I think you do. Pretty sure. Ninety-nine percent.”

“You can jack that up to a hundred,” you say wryly.

“I’ll pretend that wasn’t an insult,” he snorts. “I am an adult, Dirk. I’m capable of rational thought.”

“Clearly not rational enough to get rid of me.” And you’re frustrated now, maybe more so than before, and it leaks into your voice, drawling, mean.

“Why do you always say shit like this?” he asks, drags a hand down his face.

“Because it’s true,” you say, simple, logical. You get up and he follows you, and you wander back to your old bedroom because you now that, at least, is a safer place to fight. “Sewing up the punctures in the timeline will give this world meaning again, and I’m willing to bite that bullet if it means fulfilling my purpose.” You turn towards him as you drop onto the edge of the bed. “Given you allow me one last act of heroism, mind.”

“I can’t do that,” he says, raising his voice. “Don’t you fucking get that? Do you have any idea how fucked up it is that you keep bringing it up? How much shit I went through in the first place, just to get you back? The Olympic hurdles of dream-fucked nonsense Rose made me jump, the nightmares, the weird messed up Ascension shit? Do you have _any_ fucking clue how pissed I was at you? How I felt for those years before I -”

He drops his face into his hands, takes a moment to himself, and you watch him perform the most belated of pirouettes off the handle, tip your head where he can’t see. You reckon it’s about damn time.

“I was going to tell you everything! How I felt about both of you, how confusing it was to - and then you, you did this!” Dave flings his arm up, gestures around the room. “You fucked off and abandoned me! You hurt all our friends and you made me hate some of them, more than I should, and I couldn’t talk to you about any of it because you made yourself so unavailable, even though you’re the one I go to for everything, even though the one person I should hate more than anyone is _you_ , but I don’t.” He drops his shoulders, rubs his face. When he speaks again it’s so soft you nearly miss it. “You didn’t even say goodbye.”

You take a lot longer to answer than you probably should, stare at him with his wild hair and the scruff on his jaw, the line that’s trying to form between his brow from squinting all those years, in spite of his shades. You care so much about this guy, with his tacky red shirt and vintage SBaHJ pants. But you don’t know how to tell him.

You think that might be your biggest flaw, after all.

“You were the last person I wanted to see me like that,” you say after a moment.

That’s not good enough for Dave, and quite frankly, it shouldn’t be. “If you were worried about that you shouldn’t have done it at all!”

You rub your jaw in frustration, drop your eyes to stare at the floor. “I had to. It was important. I couldn’t allow -”

“But you did!” Dave’s hands go skyward again. He’s really losin’ it here. “You did, you let go and you did it for me, or I thought you did, I kinda wanted to pretend you did, and that was supposed to mean something, we were supposed to have a happy ending, but what the fuck am I supposed to do now when you won’t even look at me?”

You bite your tongue so hard you see stars, hands on your knees. To be emotionally open now would,

it would destroy a piece of you, you think, inane, insane. It feels so deeply ingrained into what makes you you that you hardly know where to start.

“You have Karkat,” you say, like it’s simple. Easy. “I know you believe you need me with you, but I’m sure, given time, you’ll see that he complements you, and the two of you make quite the pair, increasingly so if I am removed entirely.”

“You can’t do this,” he says, drags his hands through his hair. “You can’t - you don’t get to curate my experience with you and Karkat. You don’t get to decide what I want, and you don’t get to run away because you think you’re still a villain.”

“But I am,” you say, and it isn’t agony but frustration, irritation leaking through the cracks, a frown creasing the corners of your mouth and fingers curling into fists. “Your desperation to convince myself and others of the contrary is cute, Dave, but quite frankly I think I’ve shown my hand clearly enough. There isn’t much need for pussyfootin’ around it any longer.”

“That’s not fair,” Dave whispers, and you see hurt, you see it all rolled up in his anger, how he grits his teeth, hands at his sides, flexing with their inability to do something, anything. “You can’t seriously be doing this right now, like the last three fucking months don’t matter. You can’t ask me to _kill_ you, Dirk, Christ, I -”

“Don’t,” you snap, quickly, curl back into yourself immediately. You can’t bite Dave’s head off (neither literally nor figuratively, haha get it). You’re being a dick.

Again.

Big surprise. Of course you are.

You’re you.

“Why the fuck not?” he says, and you think he might be shaking. Indignation, rage. “What batshit reason could you possibly have this time!”

“Because I don’t deserve it!” you say, and you want to throw _your_ hands up, want to flee again. “And the sooner you understand that, the sooner you can do what’s right.”

“You don’t get to decide that for me and we both know it,” Dave says, voice cold, layered with steel. “I’m not a toy for you to boss around. Ain’t your puppet, _bro_.”

“No?” you sneer, frigid, mean, ugly face and ugly words. “Then what must I do to get you to play your part? Do I need to beg you, Dave? Do you want me on my knees with my neck bared so you can get the full picture?”

“No!” He lifts his hands, drops them, shakes the tension free. “I don’t even want to be out here! I want to go home and you won’t let us!”

“It isn’t -”

“It is,” he says, and he gains ground, standing in the middle of your room taking up all the air. “Even if you don’t want it to be, even if it takes me two more goddamn years, I’m gonna make you see that or I’m gonna die fucking trying.”

You smile, albeit weakly. “I rather think that’s my job.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” he says. “How could you even ask me to do that after -”

And you know, of course, what it does to him, what it means to the piece of him still lodged deep inside, a broken escapement that never shook free.

“Because I’m almost certain I still deserve it,” you say, and it doesn’t feel like an emotional response. It just feels like a fact.

“I don’t care,” Dave says, petulant, frustrated. “I don’t give a shit about any of that, I don’t care that you think you still need to be stopped or whatever! Like I do, obviously, fuck, I do, I care so much and I feel like you can’t see that but Jesus dicks, dude, what will it take for you to get that?”

“I don’t know,” you say immediately, and wish you hadn’t.

“I’m not going to kill you,” he says, and there’s a finality to it. You can almost hear it in stereo, shaded in red. “No matter what you do, I’m not going to fucking kill you.”

“Why?” you ask, exasperated, stupid. You can’t touch him, though you want to, and you can’t run away again, because you know he won’t let you.

You are the one person in the world that you’re reliably sure Dave would use his powers for. You just don’t want it to be a good thing.

“Because I love you, you idiot,” he huffs before you can stop him, voice cracked at the edges. “Is that not clear?”

You grimace, can’t quite look at him. “I would say that it does not come as a shock.”

“Wow. Dirk, you may be a smart guy but sometimes you come across as such a fucking jackass.”

“I know.” It’s almost normal, just for a second, the two of you, wry and mean for the sake of it. “Can you ever forgive me?”

He steps in close, just far enough that you don’t quite touch, and you wonder if he’s debating whether to lift your chin. “If you let me take you home.”

“I -” You hesitate, wince. You would like that, of course, part of you would love nothing more, to feel that sense of, of ease. Comfort. “I don’t know.”

“Well I do,” he murmurs. He doesn’t touch you, not once, and you know it’s fear, and you know it’s respect, and you want, more than anything, to reach out again. Just this once. “I’m going home, and I want you there.”

And just like always, you waver, you sigh, and you let go.

Dave is quiet on the way home, and you don’t bother to break the silence. You don’t really know what you would say, if you felt up to it at all. 

You feel something bordering on guilty, though perhaps mostly shame, as you drop down on the roof and head downstairs to your room.

You can hear the TV from below, not quite full volume, the ridiculous sounds of a RITPP rerun, and you and Dave don’t speak until you’re dropped back down on the bed, still half-dressed like you didn’t spend the day flying around. You’re almost certainly covered in a thin film of condensation. It’s only a little disgusting.

“Gross,” Dave says, about himself, immediately shedding his pants. He’s wearing those ugly boxers again. You don’t comment. “God can you even believe it’s been so fucking hot? I know this ain’t Texas prime but I for one am not lovin’ it. That was a reference, in case you were worried.”

“I wasn’t,” you murmur, try to hide your affection for him as you watch him change shirts, keep those horrid boxers. “I know I can always count on you when it comes to a shitty refrance.”

“Refrance,” he huffs softly. “Haven’t thought about that in a long while.”

“You should,” you say. “I liked them. They were a pretty big box office hit, y’know.”

“Yeah, I guess I didn’t feel like I was the one making them, back then,” he says, shrugs. “Now I feel like I shouldn’t have stopped in the first place. But I don’t think that’s the Me I am talking.”

You offer a fragile smile. “As a self-appointed historian of all things Dave Strider, I can assure you that your work as a mark of individuality most incapable of being duplicated.”

He scoffs. “Flattery, bro.”

“I would consider my words to be genuine,” you say.

“And yet you ain’t willin’ to hear me out when I tell you I care,” he sighs. Furrows his brow again. “Why do you do that? Why the fuck won’t you just let us care about you for once? Just like, five goddamn minutes. All I ask.”

It’s not an easy question. You are far from incapable of seeing your own flaws when they are laid out before you, at least as you stand today, the tendency towards manipulation, the cruelty, the harsh sense of Justice that comes from the viewpoint of someone who believes his own actions to be the correct course.

But you are not so far gone that you cannot see that your logic has holes the size of meteors punched through it, and perhaps you are still floundering, crawling beneath a pile of splinters who can do nothing but harm you, if you continue to refuse the idea of cohesion.

But how can you let go?

How can you be Dirk Strider if you are no longer in control?

“I suppose,” you begin, lifting your chin to focus on the place where his eyes must be, “I’m afraid.”

Dave looks devastated, all composure unfolding before you, emotions reading across his face like a highway billboard. “Of what?”

“Of this.” You motion vaguely to the distance between you. “Of us. I have been assured that you, that you like me, that you desire my attention as I do yours, but how can I trust myself when I know what I’m capable of?” Your hand curls into a fist, so tight your knuckles pop on their own. You cannot tell, in that moment, if it is fear, or rage. “How can I - after everything I’ve done? After all the ways I’ve hurt, all the bits and pieces I destroyed for my own gain, for the sake of relevance in a story that so desperately wanted to end, how can I stand before you and ask forgiveness? How can I possibly be worth the trouble?”

“Well that’s the thing,” Dave starts, crossing the room. Mere feet separate the bed from the door, but to you, they feel like miles. “You don’t get to decide that.” His voice shakes, but it’s not from fear. “I do. Your friends do. Being worth shit or not worth anything, trying to quantify relevancy or whatever? That’s all fucking horseshit. People don’t work like that.” He looms over you, and you have never felt so at peace than you do with Dave Strider looking down on you. “You can’t write someone into a part and expect them to play it because you want them to. Look how bad that turned out for everyone. How shitty that worked out for you.” He backs you further onto the bed, leans until his legs pin you on both sides and you’re long gone horizontal. “You have to let things be. You have to let the universe be.”

“I don’t know how,” you say weakly.

“That’s okay,” he murmurs, an undercurrent of kindness. That’s the thing that separates you, you think, and it feels like a tragedy. “We’ll figure it out together.”

There are worse ways to lose your relevance, you think, than lying on your back with Dave Strider in your lap, holding himself up with one arm, the other cupping your face.

“What if I can’t do it,” you say, lift up on your elbows to wrap your hand in his shirt.

“I’ll be here,” he says, already leaning in, following you down, down, down, until your back hits the mattress again. “I won’t let you fall. Not again.”

And the worst part is, you trust him.

Fuck, but you shouldn’t, you know yourself so well, you know the demons that crawl beneath your skin, but you trust him, maybe more than you ever could have trusted yourself.

So when he pushes up under your shirt, callused fingertips and shaking hands, when he asks, stilted, “Can I...?” all you can do is nod.

He’s slow, hesitant. You don’t usually last this long before pulling away, shutting down, something you can never quite allow yourself, something you don’t feel you’ve earned, or deserve. You shiver with his hands on you, still warm from your journey, sliding up your sides and across your chest, electricity, a thrill you haven’t felt in just long enough it borders on pathetic.

Dave smiles when you suck in air, and then leans down to press your lips together. Slow, first, shy, like it’s the first time all over again, and then harder, heat and tongue, shades clacking together clumsily, laughing against each other’s cheeks.

He pulls back for a moment, removes your shades with care, like removing a layer of clothing, hesitant, careful, so gentle that you very nearly startle when he pushes his own up into his hair with less finesse or care than you’re used to.

He huffs when you hold him back easily, when you untangle the nose piece from his bangs and take the extra time to place them on the floor.

“I want you to know how much you mean to me,” he blurts when you’ve settled again, and it sounds petulant as he climbs up onto the bed, straddles your lap. “It’s shit awful ridiculous how much you doubt that, and quite frankly I find it insulting that you don’t believe me.”

“I never said that,” you say, let your hand hover above his hip, only nervous for your lack of permission to touch.

Dave’s face is open to you now and when he smiles, it’s affection and exasperation. “You don’t always have to say shit out loud for people to understand you.”

“I don’t know if now is the right time for us to be discussing this,” you say, but you’re aware that he can see your eyes just as well, your whole face exposed, and that you don’t have anywhere left to hide.

Dave without shades is a wonder to you, pale eyelashes and heavy eyebrows that slant downwards enough to make him look skeptical, almost angry. “I think it’s the perfect goddamn time.” He leans forward, puts his hand on your chest. “You do this thing every time we’re together where you start to get really close and I think, _fuck yes, he’s into it, we’re gonna kiss and be in love,_ all Earth Prime 2000s Disney stars in our eyes, feelin’ the butterflies or some shit, but then you - you pull away or you kiss my hand and you won’t even look at me.” His fingers drag up your collarbone, and when a callus snags on your neck, you shiver. “How the fuck am I supposed to interpret that.”

“It isn’t that I - it’s not your fault,” you say, but he should know that, you think. It’s you, it’s always you, the fear you have of ruining things, of making them worse, because that’s what you, isn’t it, you push and you pull and eventually the pressure is too much.

Eventually, things break.

You could never let Dave be one of them.

“I know that,” Dave mumbles, eyes hooded as he tips forward, presses your lips together once, then again, inhale the scent of bitter coffee. “But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect me.” His thumb skates your Adam’s apple and you shiver again, hips tipping up towards him. He’s not wearing pants, and you swallow hard when he pulls back just enough that you see him grin. “Really?”

“It’s been,” you huff defensively, flush red uselessly, “awhile.”

Dave hums, cheek dimpling, and moves his mouth to your jaw, kisses a line up to nip playfully at your ear.

“I do - I do care about you,” you say, touch the back of his head, fingers pulling through hair like filament, move to his neck, his shoulder, his arm, grasp flighty, uncertain as he sucks at your neck and you try to control your breathing, to keep yourself steady. “I am aware that there is something of a - a flaw in my personality that makes it impossible for me to disclose this information without first yanking my teeth -”

“Or your hair,” he says, pulling back abruptly to wiggle his eyebrows. 

You give him a flat look, shove his face away from you.

He licks your hand.

“Dave.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“Yeah.” He sits back on his haunches, opens his mouth, and you take the opportunity to make your move.

You drag his shirt over his head and do not laugh at his sound of dismay, when he has to let go of your to slip it free of his arms, and you smile when he scowls down at you.

“Cold?” you say, try not to sound smug.

“This isn’t actually fair, I think,” he says slowly.

“What isn’t?” You raise your eyebrows, play dumb.

Dave frowns, but it’s more of a pout, and those long fingers come to slip under the edge of your shirt again. “I’m like, hella more naked than you. This is just unfair Dirk Strider bullshit, right here, and honestly? I’m not diggin’ it.”

“I don’t actually think that’s true,” you say cheerfully, eyes dropping to his waist. You stroke idly at his hip and take pleasure in the way he shifts forward on top of you.

“Oh fuck you,” he scoffs, but the flush on his face creeps down his neck and blooms across his chest in a way that you find so pretty you almost shiver from the thought of kissing it.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” you murmur, let your voice drop low, that halfway point towards a drawl that you usually take care to avoid.

Dave makes a soft sound, bites his lip, and you know in that moment that you trully are in fucking love with this asshole.

Well.

Shit.

“The question was never whether or not you care about me,” he says instead, swallowing hard as he adjusts himself. Your mouth goes dry. “It was whether or not you’re ever gonna cut the shit and let me fucking love you like a normal human person.”

“Mario,” you say. He stops, blinks dumbly. “The - Let Me Love You, it came out in 2004. The artist’s name was Mario Barrett.”

Dave opens his mouth, closes it. “You,” he says, wiping a hand down his face, muffling a laugh into his palm. “You suck so much.”

Okay, yeah, that was pretty lame. Sometimes you just can’t help yourself.

“I could,” you say huskily, rolling your hips up against him. “If you - if you wanted me to.”

He lets out a small groan that goes straight to your dick, but you just grin, slip a leg free, and use it to hook around his waist, flip and roll until his back hits the bed and his head, the pillow.

Kissing Dave is not foreign to you now, an indulgence you allow yourself despite every reservation, but there is something to that sensation, the comfort of home, the way he pushes into your mouth, unafraid, demanding, hand wrapped tight enough in your collar you almost choke, and you pull away with difficulty, look down at him, sloppy smile and hazy eyes.

“You’re beautiful,” he blurts, stupid, unfiltered, and you make a sound stuck between a protest and a laugh, drop your face to his neck so you won’t have to look at him as your ears turn pink.

“How the fuck can you say that with a straight face.”

“Because you are, and I’m right.” And then he guides you back up, kisses you again. “I can’t fucking believe I really have to say this, Dirk, but you do know that I, that I love you, right?”

There’s such worry in his eyes there, as he holds your face, thumb stroking back against your cheek, over and over in a manner so tender you could almost fall apart from that alone.

“I want to,” you say, voice low, cracked around the edges. More than anything, more than anything at all, you want - fuck, you want this so much.

He quirks a smile and you think it looks sad, for a moment, a sort of hopelessness in the face of your overwhelming despair, the vortex of your ego, all encompassing, greedy and unreasonable. “I have good fuckin’ news then, bromeo. Because I do. A lot. So much. I’m absolutely lousy with it. Even if you are kinda shitty, and even if you don’t really believe me.”

You turn your head to press a kiss against his fingers, one by one. “I want to. I will.” Anything for him, anything at all.

“Good,” he whispers, holds your chin, eyes crinkled at the corners, devotion enough to shatter you, and you bow your head and begin kissing a line down his chest.

You’re going to make good on that promise.

He does deserve it, after all.

You do let him back on top of you, eventually, when you’ve tugged a moan free from him, when your shirt has joined his on the floor, when you’ve pressed him so hard into the mattress you’re sure he’ll bruise, when you pull him close, with your hands, and then later, your legs.

He talks the entire time, because of course he does, spits “I love you” like a prayer.

“I love you,” as you hold his hips, dragging a lazy stripe up the inside of his thigh. “I love you,” as he rolls you in the bed. “I love you,” as he presses into you, as your hands fight for an anchor, his shoulders, his arms, his hair.

“I love you,” as you shudder in the aftermath, gasping for air and holding so tight you’re almost afraid to let go, and once more, when you’re both curled, sticky with sweat and too tired to complain, under the covers in your stupid too-small bed.

“I do love you, y’know,” Dave says, eyes half-mast, mouth curved lazily upward, most of his face crushed into the pillow. “In case you were worried.”

“I wasn’t,” you say softly, reach out to push the hair back from his eyes where it’s stuck in uneven clumps. “I love you, too.”

And you do, you do, so much, with your whole body, with all of the horrible broken parts of yourself, shattered and whole and across every timeline, you love him.

“Good,” he mumbles, then yawns. “Because honestly at this point it’d be really fucked up if you changed your mind.”

“Perish the thought,” you say dryly.

He grunts, cracks an eye to peek back at you. “Is it too early for a nap? Because no offense dude, I’m beat.”

You’re pretty sure you couldn’t stop smiling, even if you wanted to. “You’re the god of Time, you tell me.”

Dave sighs, turns his head to make a displeased sound into the pillow. “Do you think Karkat will be made if we skip dinner with John and Jade tonight?”

“Maybe,” you say, a dawning realization of horror beginning to bloom in the back of your mind. “Is he still -”

“I ‘unno, maybe.” Dave shrugs, and you reach out to swat him on the head. He laughs, bats you away. “Haha nah, I told him to take a hike before I left. Not like, a literal hike. Because it’s daytime. But he took the transportalizer to Roxy’s house. He and Calliope are still redecorating and no offense but sometimes things just need a troll’s touch.”

“Not exactly known for their utilitarian decor, the Lalondes,” you say, fighting a smile. 

“Exactly. Callie ain’t saying no to anything, so it’s up to someone else to do the goddamn job. I am gonna tell him all this later,” he adds, head popping up. He licks his lips, and you think he seems - shy, maybe a bit uncomfortable. “If that’s okay. With you.”

You think if anyone deserves to know you’ve gotten (at least a little bit) over your hoofbeast shit,it’s probably Karkat, but you guess it is kind of embarrassing, knowing that his boyfriend who probably hates you (but definitely in a platonic way) is going to hear all the dirty deets. “I don’t really care,” you say, even if you might, just a tad. “At this rate he’ll probably just be pissed we didn’t do this sooner.”

“God, you’re right,” he wails, rolling over and flopping onto his back. “You think he laid into you? You should hear him when we’re alone, dude, it’s incessant. If I have to hear one more lecture about relationships that surpass the boundaries of a quadrant I’ll explode.”

You let out a breathy laugh - more, you realize, than you‘ve laughed in years. “I suppose I can’t argue when I’ve already convinced myself that Karkat is the best thing that’s ever happened to you?”

“What does that make you?” he asks, though you both know the answer.

You reach out again, push your hand back into his hair. “The worst.”

“You gotta stop saying that,” he sighs, pushing himself up on an elbow, your hand sliding free, stroking along his arm before falling “So you’re - okay, right? Not gonna freak out on me.” Dave’s eyes are piercing, demanding in a way you don’t think he even knows he’s capable of, blood red, unnatural, intense. Beautiful.

You are not, in a literal sense, probably ever going to be truly okay, but you feel lighter, laying in bed beside him, his leg still pressed to yours, fingers worming their way over to lace between your own. “Yes,” you say. “For now, yes, I believe I might be.”

And maybe you will freak out again, later, or tomorrow, or the next day, but you won’t be alone, not entirely, and you will learn to be better, will probably fall apart trying.

The important part, you think, is that you are willing to try at all.

“Rose is going to make fun of us for days,” he whispers, and it’s horror mixed with the kind of amusement you’ve come to expect from a Lalonde.

“I think we probably deserve it,” you say, offer a shitty little grin.

Dave scowls at you in warning, then rolls again, drops his head onto your chest. You don’t complain when your skin sticks together. “You suck. A lot. So much. I just want you to know that no matter how much I love you, it doesn’t mean you suck any less.”

“Yes, well,” you laugh again, raise your hands to push his bangs back, “I can hardly change everything in a day, now can I?’

“We’ll work on it,” he murmurs, bringing your hand to his lips and kissing the back of your knuckles, one by one. “Together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gives u a peace sign thank you for coming to my extended ted talk about learning 2 let yourself be loved and just like. whatever this is!

**Author's Note:**

> This will be three chapters and I'm done writing it but I'm also it in between my nano so I will only post when I have time!  
> who the fuck writes mid-nano  
> (me bitch)


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